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m 



The Challenge 
of the War 

Can Science Answer the 
Riddle of the Grave f 

By HENRY FRANK 

Member of the American Association for the Ad- 
vancement of Science; Honorary Life Member 
of the Societe Academique D^Histoire In- 
ternationale, Paris; Author of "Modem 
Light on Immortality;" "Psychic 
Phenomena, Science and Im- 
mortality;" etc. 

Introduction by 
Hereward Carrington, Ph.D. 



BOSTON 

The Stratford Company 

1919 



■p^%^ 



Copyright 1919 

The STRATFORD CO., Publishers 

Boston, Mass. 



The Alpine Press, Boston, Mass., U. S. A. 

MAR 21 1919 

©CI.A5t272 3 



DEDICATED TO 
GUSTAVE LE BON 

Whose ^ooluilon of Matter and ^ooluiion of Forces have been 

A Revelation and Inspiration to the Author 

in the Pursuit of Truth 



Preface 

About twenty years ago I delivered a series of lec- 
tures on Immortality in New York City. The interest 
in the lectures was so pronounced that in response 
to requests I published a small pamphlet entitled 
"Scientific Demonstration of Immortality" (a mis- 
nomer, as on calmer and more serious investigation 
I discovered). 

Some years later, 1909, I published "Modern Light 
on Immortality" in which I undertook to survey the 
entire historical origin and development of the con- 
ception and to question the attitude of recent science 
toward the problem. 

That compelled me to write a larger and more 
thorough-going work to include the marvels of 
psychological and psychic phenomena. In that work 
I undertook to show how all those wonders could prob- 
ably be explained by scientific laws recently dis- 
covered. 

These two books aroused a considerable discussion,' 
especially because of my venturing to attempt an ex- 
planation of spiritism by natural law and because of 
the apparent proof of potential future life which the 
argument tentatively undertook. 

Among the many interesting letters I received was 
one from Ernst Haeckel, the deservedly distinguished 
head of the German school of mechanistic Monism, 
which I herewith present: 

vii 



PREFACE 

**Mr. Henry Frank, Author of 'Modem Light on 
Immortality/ etc., (N. Y.) 
Jena, Oct. 9, 1911. 

**Most Respected Sir: — You had the goodness to 
send me your interesting work on * Immortality. ' As 
I have been sick for a long time and unfit for any 
occupation, I have just come sufficiently to myself to 
study your very learned work, and am able but now 
to express my thanks. 

**In 'Part I' you have with great knowledge of 
the literature presented the historical development of 
the problems of Everlasting Life and in 'Part II* you 
have endeavored to harmonize the modem deductions 
of Philosophy and the science of Biology with the 
poetical imagery of the Future Life. With full recog- 
nition of your widespread scholarship, and the keen- 
ness of your speculations, nevertheless, I do not find 
that you succeed in your original 'New Solution of 
the Problem,' or that the reality of a peculiar 'Psy- 
chical Immortality' is scientifically demonstrated. 
As you are familiar with my own views as expressed 
in my 'Riddle of the Universe' (Chapter XI), I need 
not further analyze the difference between our con- 
clusions. I am a Naturalist Monist and must regard 
activity of the soul (and all the phenomena of self- 
consciousness) as physiological functions of the 
'Phronema;' namely the work of the neurons or 
phronetal cells, which compose the grey rind of our 
brains. In my 'Anthropogeny' ('Evolution of Man') 
I have shown how the identical organization and de- 
velopment of the brain, both in Man and in the other 

viii 



PREFACE 

Mammals, are to be explained from tlie same phy- 
siological origin. As you are primarily a Theologian 
and a Metaphysician, therefore a Dualist (even as 
our friend, Paul Cams, in spite of his most excellent 
writings on Monism), it is inevitable that our final 
deductions should be opposed. When you have given 
many years to the exhaustive study of Biology, and 
examined into every treatise of Comparative Mor- 
phology and Physiology, you will even on the ground 
of your observations, very likely arrive at the identical 
Monistic convictions that I have. 
**With very great respect 

''Yours faithfully, 

''ERNST HAECKEL.'' 

In the present treatise I have undertaken to show 
that resting even upon Dr. Haeckel's own "exhaus- 
tive study of Biology and examination into every 
treatise of comparative Morphology and Physiology,'' 
the deductions which he himself makes negativing 
not only the probability but the possibility of an after 
existence cannot be accepted as logically valid or con- 
vincing. To this end I have analyzed and undertaken 
to prove the false conclusions to which both he and 
Dr. Ostwald and other mechanicians have been led 
by the interpretation which they place on their own 
scientific data. 

In the second edition of my second work on Im- 
mortality (Psychic Phenomena Science and Immor- 
tality), I have included my replies to numerous other 
critics occupying some thirty pages, so I will make no 
further reference to them in this book. But I have 



PREFACE 

undertaken in the present volume to show how the 
stock arguments of scientific mechanism or material- 
ism, do not disprove the possible truth of future 
existence, and have followed up the discussion by re- 
enforcing the arguments based on recent discoveries, 
especially in physics and biology which seem to me 
to establish the logical possibility, not to say proba- 
bility, of such an existence. 

I have laid particular stress on the electron theory 
of thought which I think overcomes many difficulties 
involved in the problem. This theory is particularly 
elucidated in Chapters XXVIII and XXIX. In 
Chapter XXXI I have examined in detail Lodge's 
"Raymond" and carefully weighed its alleged evi- 
dence of personal continuity after death. 



Foreword 

(Written before the signing of the Armistice.) 

At no time in the world's history, perhaps, has 
the mind of man been so riveted on the problem of 
death and its possible issue, as at present. 

The greatest and most destructive war in the an- 
nals of time is devouring more millions of human be- 
ings than, a few centuries ago, existed on the entire 
planet. 

This gigantic holocaust has left its wounds and 
scars in almost every household of the earth. From 
the farmost distance of the sometime effete Orient, 
to the pulsing conjSnes of the Occident, the flames of 
the vast conflagration have spread and engulfed in- 
conceivable hordes of human beings in their grasp. 

In normal times the average death rate runs from 
16 to 20 per thousand of the population. But when 
in the course of only four years 25,000,000 casualties 
have been registered, with millions more each year 
to be hurled into the hungry maw of death, it need 
not surprise us that humankind stand aghast at the 
edge of the grave and gaze, with startled eyes, into 
its mysterious gloom, praying that some voice may 
arise to give consolation and hope to the bereaved and 
mourning. 

Whether humanity will, in consequence, regain a 
new assurance of the after life, because of this uni- 
versal tragedy, or whether the gloom and agony will 

xi 



FOREWORD 

tend to increase doubt and despair, is the problem that 
addresses itself to every thinking person. 

There are those who approach the subject, in the 
face of the universal woe, with awakened emotions 
that give wings to sorrow and suffer it to soar away 
to realms of prophetic bliss. Some of those who have 
returned from the front bring tales of the rejuvenes- 
cence of faith, of the deepening desire for an after 
life, and of a disposition to return to orthodox forms 
of belief. 

Such individuals, as Harry Lauder, for example, 
whose heart has been very tenderly affected by his 
own sad experience, come with words of universal 
assurance upon their lips, and declare that the war 
has overcast the grave with golden beams of promised 
joy and beauty. 

The thrilling thought, he asseverates, that is now 
sweeping the trenches, is that death has lost its sting 
and the grave its victory, because the boys on the 
battlefield now know that life here is but the door- 
way to a life to come. 

Other writers who have not been at the front and 
still cling to their prepossessions, such as Ernst 
Haeckel, the German scientist, look on this increase 
of death but as a natural phenomenon and calculated 
to awaken no profounder contemplations of future 
possibilities, than the sudden casualties that befall 
earthquakes, or other disasters on land and sea. 

Nevertheless, we cannot refrain from realizing that 
such declarations, whether of faith or doubt, are 
chiefly the articulation of emotions or predispositions 

xii 



FOREWORD 

that lie deeply buried in the breast, and whether or 
not they truly reflect the verity which inheres in 
Nature as the Supreme Fact, is the last and stu- 
pendous problem that must finally be solved. 

For what reckons it, or what ultimate value, that 
we are told this or that, that one speaks of increased 
faith and exalted anticipations of a coming paradise, 
made more vivid by the gloom and horror of war; or 
whether they proclaim a profounder doubt than ever 
before, because Nature or God suffers such an incal- 
culable slaughter of human beings, and thus, by im- 
plication, demonstrates the cheapness of life and its 
indifferent abandonment ? 

After all, these are but emotional expressions or 
vain contemplations; crude deductions based on 
vague scientific data or insecure and unfounded 
imagination. 

Confronting the appalling conditions that now 
affright the world, and halted by the serious mis- 
givings that beset the race, the author has undertaken 
calmly, and without bias or predilection, to ask, once 
again, for an utterance of Nature herself, and the 
revelation of the truth that inheres in her laws. 

Believing that this problem can never be solved 
save as Nature herself shall solve it for us, when we 
shall acquire such a discernment of her secret as shall 
be clear and indubitable, he has set before himself 
the arduous task of analyzing every scientific objec- 
tion which in the name of Nature has been proclaimed 
against the possibility of an after life; and having 
traversed this far-reaching historic research, he finally 



FOREWORD 

attempts to show wherein Nature, evinced in the dis- 
coveries and logical deductions of science, presents 
genuine grounds for hope, at least, whereon Man may 
build a faith that need not rest on slipping sands. 



XIV 



Introduction 

By Herewaed Carrington, Ph. D. 

The point-of-view assumed by Dr. Henry Frank, 
in his book, seems to me to be an eminently sound 
and sensible one; and it is one, moreover, which has 
seldom been taken in the past by psychical re- 
searchers, or by those who write upon this subject. 
Yet it is one, nevertheless, which has been sorely 
neglected in the past — I refer to the attempt here 
made to show the relationship between psychical and 
supernormal phenomena, and general scientific facts, 
as accepted today by orthodox science. All scientific 
advance has been made by the process of dovetailing 
the unknown into the known, and showing their points 
of connection, and their relationship ; and unless this 
connection can be shown at one point, or a series of 
points, the facts in question remain outside the field of 
legitimate science, and inexplicable. One of the chief 
objections to psychic phenomena has always been that 
they are contrary to the laws of Nature; they are 
contrary to accepted facts ; and until some connection 
can be shown to exist between these phenomena and 
the ordinary facts of science, this attitude of scep- 
ticism will probably continue to prevail. 

How is this deadlock ever to be broken ? Doubtless, 
in the first place, by the accumulation of more facts 
and facts which are better attested ; and in the second 
place, by showing that these phenomena are not out- 

XV 



INTRODUCTION 

side the laws of Nature and inherently impossible, 
but, rightly understood, are possibly scientifically ex- 
plicable, and related in some hitherto unsuspected 
manner with other well-known phenomena. 

Now, this is just what Mr. Frank has endeavored 
to do, to a certain extent, in the book before us, and 
this is the sort of effort which is surely in the right 
direction. This most interesting book is not only of 
value intrinsically, but because of the bold attitude 
assumed in relation to the facts discussed within it. 

If psychic phenomena exist, they must bear some 
relation to the facts of biology, physics, chemistry, 
and other sciences. In some way, they must be con- 
nected with them; or at least their possible correla- 
tions should be investigated. Approaching the prob- 
lems of psychical research from the standpoint of 
the official sciences is one of the surest ways of under- 
standing them. 

Now, although I cannot agree with all Mr. Frank's 
views, as will be seen later on, yet I none the less 
believe that the author of this book has contributed 
one of the most thoughtful and illuminating works 
so far issued upon this subject. And particularly 
I would commend his attitude towards Vitalism, 
which he has enunciated and defended quite fully in 
Chapter XV and elsewhere throughout this book. 
While it is true that many facts have, of late, been 
adduced in favor of the mechanistic interpretation of 
life, and numerous well-known authors have defended 
this view, it is none the less true that the distinct 
tendency of modern biology is towards some form 
of vitalism ; and the work of Bergson, Lodge, Driesch 

xvi 



INTRODUCTION 

and others, has given this belief a new and a stronger 
foothold than it has enjoyed for many years. Pro- 
fessor E. B. Wilson, indeed, the eminent biologist, has 
lately asserted that : 

* * .... The story of the cell has on the whole seemed 
to widen rather than to narrow the enormous gap 
that separates even the lowest forms of life from the 
inorganic word." {The Cell, p. 434.) 

This question — of the nature of the life force — is 
a far more important one, both theoretically and prac- 
tically, than most researchers are aware of. Whether 
or not life can exist apart from the body is, of course, 
the great crux of modern science. The mechanistic 
view is that vitality — life — is associated with the 
functioning of the nervous system, and indeed is its 
product, so that all talk of life existing apart from 
nervous tissue is so much rubbish. If it were defi- 
nitely proved, however, that such was actually the 
case — that life could exist apart from matter and a 
material organism, it would give us a tremendous 
leverage, and a vital point of attack upon the 
mechanist — just as the phenomena of thought- 
photography seem to show the possibility of thoughts 
existing apart from brain activity, as Mr. Frank has 
said in his book. This question of the nature of 
the vital energy within us is so important, indeed, 
that, as I have contended elsewhere: *'When the 
phenomena of psychical research come to be generally 
accepted, we shall have to recast many of our con- 
ceptions and beliefs, and one of the first of these will 
be our idea of vitality and the life force. Much 
hinges on this for psychic research, and, if its advo- 

xvii 



INTRODUCTION 

eates could but see it, the battle might be practically 
won on this issue alone." The reason for this is sim- 
ply that we have ia this way a very good chance of 
proving that life can exist apart from nervous tissue ; 
and if that should ever be demonstrated, then good-bye 
to the older mechanistic views of life, and its nature 
and connection with the organism! 

In discussing the question of immortality — or rather 
the natural indestructibility of the cell and of proto- 
plasm, Mr. Frank has quoted the work of Weismann, 
Loeb, and others ; and it is indeed curious to note the 
attitude assumed by many of these men — the most 
rigorous and eminent men of science today — with re- 
gard to this problem. Many biologists could be found 
who would declare that there is no known reason 
why the human organism should ever wear out and 
die, since it has somehow learned to repair itself. 
But their arguments have (perhaps naturally enough) 
never gained wide acceptance in accredited circles, 
and the bare fact that all men do die seemed com- 
pletely to refute their views. Yet, as Mr. Frank has 
shown, the death of the body is in a sense as mys- 
terious as its life; and J. Loeb, for instance, in his 
latest work, ^^TKe Organism as a Whole/* says: — 

^ ' The idea that the body cells are naturally immor- 
tal, and die only if exposed to extreme injuries, such 
as prolonged lack of oxygen or too high a tempera- 
ture, helps to make one problem more intelligible. . . . 
It seems indeed uncanny that so delicate a mechanism 
(as the heart) should function so regulary for so 
many years. The mysticism connected with this and 
other phenomena of adaptation would disappear if 

xviii 



INTRODUCTION 

we would be certain that all cells are really immor- 
tal, and that the fact which demands an explanation 
is not the continued activity but the cessation of 
activity in death. Thus we see that the idea of the 
immortality of the body cell, if it can be generalized 
may be destined to become one of the main supports 
for a complete physico-chemical analysis of life phe- 
nomena, since it makes the durability of organisms 
intelligible." (pp. 32-33.) 

Thus the whirligig of Time justifies even our veriest 
dreams ! 

Mr. Frank is, I believe, quite right in arguing for a 
certain form of dualism — a belief which is also gaining 
wider and wider acceptance in the scientific and phi- 
losophical worlds. The logical monistic doctrine has 
such inconsistencies within itself, when analyzed, that 
one wonders why men ever accepted it as they have 
done — not as theoretical ultimate belief, but as a prac- 
tical and immediate working theory. The only reason 
for their belief, it seems to me, lies in the fact that it 
has presented the only immediate alternative to admit- 
ting some form of dualism, with all that implies — and 
Orthodox Science would do anything but that! Yet 
it is quite possible that science will one day, in the 
near future, prove dualism to be a fact; and then all 
the metaphysical and philosophical arguments which 
have been advanced in the past will have to be rele- 
gated to the scrap heap, like so many other *^ world- 
theories" of the past, — all of which were the accepted 
and respectable theories of their own day and time. 

In Chapter XX, Mr. Frank has argued for the 



XIX 



INTRODUCTION 

necessity of conceiving some sort of ether vehicle or 
intermediary between the mind and the body, enabling 
the former to act on the latter; and in this he is, I 
believe, quite right. He has also endeavored to state 
in what this vehicle consists. It is a sort of etheric 
organism, possibly radio-active in character. So far 
I might follow Mr. Frank ; but when he contends that 
radio-activity also 7^ the thought and consciousness 
behind this organism, animating and inhabiting it, 
I must indicate my dissent. I may have misunderstood 
Mr. Frank's argument in some important particular, 
but it seems to me that while the expression or mani- 
festation in the physical or etheric world might be 
designated as radio-active — that is, its outward mani- 
festation or expression, — the essence of the thought 
is something quite different from that, lying in the 
psychological world, and not in the physical world 
at all. All that we know of the physical energies 
in our universe goes to show that they are blind; that 
they can be directed or manipulated; but are not of 
themselves conscious or mental in essence. It is the 
same here. Mental energy might conceivably be 
brought within the law of the conservation of energy, 
in some form or another, — as Ostwald and others have 
lately tried to show, in their doctrine of * ' Energetics ; '' 
but they have one and all neglected to include, in 
their conception of the facts, the noumenon, the inner 
meaning or essence of the thought. As Dr. MacDougaLL 
pointed out and insisted upon so strongly (in his Body 
and Mind) meaning is that which distinguishes 
thought from all else; and he is even inclined to de- 
fend the view that meaning, as such, has no cerebral 



INTRODUCTION 

correlate or equivalent! This being true, it seems 
to me that meaning, the inner essence of thought and 
consciousness, can no more be attributed to radio- 
activity than to any other form of physial energy 
in this world; since it is no more distinctly psycho- 
logical than they/ With this reservation, however, 
I may say that I consider Mr. Frank *s views and 
analogies both ingenious and illuminating; and more 
than that, very probably right, — as recent investiga- 
tions in the field of psychism have shown. 

Mr. Frank has rightly drawn attention to the fact 
that the newer electric theories of matter have 
not, as yet, sufficiently modified the other practical 
sciences — such as medicine — which nevertheless deal 
with matter, but continue to regard it in the older 
light of material substance, — on the older atomic 
view. Dr. Albert Abrams, of San Francisco, has well 
pointed out, in his Spondylotherapy and elsewhere, 
that the new theories of matter should have pro- 
foundly modified the practice of medicine, — since the 
body can no longer be regarded as a mere bundle of 
matter, but rather as the expression of electrons, which 
constitute the atoms and molecules of its structure. 
An electrical theory of medicine should therefore re- 
place, to a very large extent, the older class physical 
views; the body should be regarded as an electric, 
rather than a physical, organism. This being so, a 
profound change in our views as to treatment should 
have resulted ; but, as a matter of fact, such changes 
have not as yet been observed in any branch of med- 

1 See my comment, Appendix "A" (Author). 



XXI 



INTRODUCTION 

ical literature, save only in a limited circle, and among 
electrical specialists. 

The author of this book is assuredly correct in 
maintaining that the older philosophical and ethical 
and moral arguments, aiming to prove immortality are 
quite incapable of performing that task, — just as the 
older teleological and orthodox arguments were. As 
Professor Hyslop has remarked, "Philosophy is use- 
less and helpless for proving a future life. ' ' We might 
thereby raise a presumption in its favor; we cannot 
offer proof, and proof is what is wanted. In an argu- 
ment of this kind, we must appeal to facts and facts 
alone, and meet the sceptic upon his own ground, 
and better him with weapons of his own choosing. 
This is the ad hominem argument. We must use it 
in dealing with this question. Are there or are there 
not facts which go to prove survival? We do not 
want inferences; we want demonstration. 

This demonstration Mr. Frank has tried to 
make in the present volume, and he has made the 
attempt from a rather novel standpoint. Arguing 
from the duly accredited facts of biology, physics, 
chemistry, etc., he has sought to show that these very 
facts, — rightly interpreted, and extended as we have 
a right to extend them, — prove that ''something" in 
man survives the shock of death — and hence that death 
does not end all in the sense that the materialist would 
contend. But what is this "something" which sur- 
vives? Is it the personality itself — the friend we 
once knew on earth? or is it some fragment of that 
personality? or is it a mere persistence of a form of 
energy, which continues to persist for some time after 

xxii 



INTEODUCTION 

the destruction of the body, merely by reason of its 
own inertia and momentum, — in much the same way 
that a train continues on its way for some time after 
its power has been shut off, merely by reason of its 
impetus and velocity? Well, it seems to me that this 
is the very question at issue, and which can only be 
solved by continued experiment and research, carried 
over a number of years — such experiments as the 
psychical researchers are now carrying on, and which 
the spiritualists, theosophists and others are also mak- 
ing in their own way. Again, it will be seen, we have 
a question of fact. 

After all, Christianity itself is founded not upon 
moral or ethical teachings, nor upon the Bible; but 
upon a psychical phenomenon — a fact. In the resur- 
rection of Christ we have this fact — this psychical 
phenomenon; and St. Paul himself said that: **If 
Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and 
your faith is also vain/' (I. Corinthians, XV., 14). 
That is precisely the view of the psychical researcher, 
and could not express it more exactly. All scientific 
religion must depend upon evidence, and scientific 
evidence at that. That is why Mr. F. W. H. Myers 
called psychical research **The preamble to all reli- 
gions.'' That is why Mr. Gladstone, in his oft-quoted 
remark, spoke of it as '*The most important work in 
the world today — ^by far the most important." 

It is just here, however, that Mr. Frank and I again 
find ourselves in some form of disagreement. For 
he says in Chapter XXVII: **I believe that the fur- 
ther investigation and test of this principle in con- 
nection with the marvelous claims made by spiritists 

xxiii 



INTRODUCTION 

and psychics will show that they bear no relation 
whatever to the world of spirits or anything contrary 
to the discovered laws of matter, and are amenable 
to the same planetary laws of existence." And again: 
' ' It is incumbent on the medium to prove the identity 
of the professed personality, which has thus far been 
quite an impossible achievement. ' ' And again : * * One 
may therefore accept the hypothesis of the continuity 
of thought-forms, and even spirit-personalities, with- 
out at the same time being compelled to accept the 
hypothesis of spirit return or the genuineness of 
spirit communion. Even though the personality may 
survive, we have yet no proof that such personality 
may communicate thoughts to the dwellers in the flesh ; 
for as far as we have been able yet to discover, all 
the communications are but repetitions of thoughts 
once existing in the minds of those who at one time 
dwelt on the earth; and, palpably, if they communi- 
cate other thoughts, then we are unable to determine 
that the personality sending such thoughts is the 
same as it may pretend to be, namely a spirit of one 
who once dwelt on earth. Here is the great bridge 
to be crossed in the problem of psychic phenomena: 
and until the evidence of identity can be demonstrated 
to be absolute, or at least as convincing and conclusive 
as what is demanded in a court of justice, we do not 
seem to be justified in accepting any alleged proofs 
of such intercommunication." 

Much that Mr. Frank says here is doubtless true; 
communications in the past which are in any way 
convincing are indeed rare; the problem involved 
is the crux of psychics. At the same time, I contend 

xxiv 



INTRODUCTION 

that the question can only be solved satisfactorily in 
this manner and in none other. We can only prove 
the actuality of ''spirits" by their communications — 
by getting them to communicate with us through the 
instrumentality of mediums or psychics, and proving 
their identity. If they fail to do so, the whole case 
remains ''unproven," as the Scotch would say. And 
I would be the last to say that this stage of uncer- 
tainty has as yet been passed. At the same time, 
I cannot but feel that the method is the correct one; 
and that actual proof can come in no other way. Mr. 
Frank himself seems to admit this in speaking of 
thought-photography, for here he says: **That fact 
(of thought-photography) once established would lead 
to the question of the continuity and possible per- 
petuation of such external thought-forms, and the 
possibility of an aggregation of such thought-forms 
in an ultra-material substance that might constitute 
a personal frame for future existence." Quite so. 
The continuity of thoughts after the destruction of 
the physical brain. But that is simply the problem 
in different words. If any such entity continues to 
exist, what is to prevent its communication with 
those still in the flesh, — ^provided it can find a suit- 
able instrument to render such communication possi- 
ble ? In other words, why should not spirit-communi- 
cation be a fact,^ — once granted the existence of some 
form of spirit? 

Of course, it is all a question of evidence, of fact. 
Have such communications taken place; are they 

2 Not necessarily a fact — but a possibility. (The author.) 

XXV 



INTRODUCTION 

taking place now? Many answers would be given 
to this question: A positive **Yes*' from the spirit- 
ualist ; a positive " No " from the materialist and the 
sceptic; and all the various grades of hesitation and 
doubt between. It is a question of evidence — and 
individual experience and prejudice. What will con- 
vince one may often not convince another. And I 
think Mr. Frank is quite right in saying that posi- 
tive evidence of the sort desired is very rarely (he 
says never) obtained. I quite agree with him, also, 
in his analysis of certain cases recently published, in 
which he shows their inherent weakness — particularly 
the evidence brought forward by Sir Oliver Lodge 
in his book ''Raymond,'* which I myself have else- 
where critisized, coming to the conclusion that there 
is really no good evidence at all here in favor of spirit 
return. I, myself, however, should be inclined to 
attach greater weight to pure chance coincidence and 
guessing, in this case, than Mr. Frank has done, — 
since it would be quite possible to produce any num- 
ber of "photographs'* of this description — every 
group of oflScers who went to the front has probably 
had one or more such photographs taken, in much 
the same form of grouping. The evidence as it stands, 
in this case, is extremely weak. 

In conclusion, I wish to state that I believe Mr. 
Frank has, in his book, summed up the evidence both 
pro and con, in relation to accepted scientific facts 
and their bearing upon the great question of sur- 
vival, in a thoroughly interesting, scholarly and in- 
structive manner; and has thrown many illuminative 
side-lights upon the questions involved. If he differs 

xxvi 



INTRODUCTION 

in some respects from the present writer, that is only 
to be expected in so involved and problematical a field 
as this ; but on the other hand, our agreement is very 
close in aU the main issues involved. Mr. Frank has 
approached these baffling questions from the point-of- 
view of physical science, and has taken no step which 
was not justified by the facts, — save here and there, 
where he has ventured upon hypothesis — ^which is 
the privilege of all original thinkers and writers. Mr. 
Frank's book deserves to be widely read and appre- 
ciated, and it is in the hope that this will be the case 
that I am pleased to furnish my mite in the way of 
drawing attention to it by recommending it as a 
scholarly and interesting resum6 and presentation of 
the views of modern thought upon that most vital 
of all modern questions — one which should be fore- 
most in the minds of all thinking persons at the pres- 
ent time, viz. : Can Science Answer the Riddle of the 
Grave ? 



XXVll 



Descriptive Analytical Index 

BOOK I 

Scientific Negations of Immortality 

CHAPTER I 

THE DEMANDS OF THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD page 

Demonstrative method of science and attitude of faith. 
Dr. Benjamin Moore quoted on whether methods 
of experimentation can be extended to matters 
psychical. The value of imagination in scientific 
study. Issue of immortality must be scientifically 
decided one way or other. Relation between the 
scientific method and the angle of "faith." Irving 
King quoted on "absolute thought." The prag- 
matic view. No argument for immortality con- 
vincing except to those already convinced. In- 
applicability of pragmatic theory shown in dis- 
coveries of La Place, Galileo, Dalton and von 
Frauenhof er. Reductio ad absurdum of pragmatic 
theory when applied to historic Christianity. Prag- 
matism may apply to "belief" in immortality, but 
it is worthless when applied to a study of the 
possible "fact" of immortality 1 

CHAPTER II 

WHY PHILOSOPHY HAS FAILED 

Plato's fallacious argument for immortality. The "Re- 
public" of Plato quoted. The inadequacy of Prof. 
Williams James's "permissive" argument for im- 
mortality. His argument quoted. James's "Psy- 
chology" quoted to show his rejection of the 
hypothesis of a "substantial soul." The disproof 
of an alleged proof does not involve the disproof 
of an alleged fact. The rejection of the meta- 
physical argument by scientific searchers. . . 9 

xxix 



DESCRIPTIVE ANALYTICAL INDEX 
CHAPTER in 

THE MATERIALISTIC NEGATIONS page 

Haeekel quoted on the "physiological argument." His 
definition of the physical phases of the "soul." 
Does the thinking principle cease when the phy- 
sical processes of the brain decay? Cosmic psycMc 
processes. Does Nature think? If thinking is 
involved in analysis of chemical substances, why 
not in their syntheses? Identity of primal matter. 
Evolution of the electron. Prof. Harry Jones 
quoted on the electron as "ultimate unit of matter." 
Dr. Moore quoted on the "atom, as a point of stable 
equilibrium in upward evolution." Nature's men- 
tal effort in bringing differential elements into 
logical relationship. Haeckel's admission that the 
ideal of design is significant in Nature. Haeckel's 
self-contradiction on "design" exposed in his "Rid- 
dle of the Universe." Futility of the argument of 
Chance in Nature. J. Arthur Thomson quoted on 
theory of Chance. Dr. Moore quoted on the funda- 
mental mystery of cause and effect in Nature. 12 

CHAPTER lY 

DOES NATURE THINK? 

Is consciousness necessary to thought? The achieve- 
ments of freaks and mathematical prodigies. 
Coleridge's Kubla Khan. R. W. Stevenson's 
"dream brownies." C. J. Romanes quoted on the 
integrating principle of the Cosmos that estab- 
lishes universal order. Lord Kelvin and Lucretius 
on "fortuitous concourse of atoms." Prof. Thom- 
son quoted on antecedent conditions in atom. The 
evidence that Nature is rational. The vast inven- 
tive achievements of men are but imitations of 
Nature. Shakespeare quoted. Why brain was 
evolved in man. Because men need a brain for 
thinking process is no proof that brainless Nature 
does not think. Are human thoughts coterminous 
with brain's existence or can they continue after 
brain's decease? 19 



DESCRIPTIVE ANALYTICAL INDEX 
CHAPTER V 

CAN THOUGHTS BE PHOTOGRAPHED? page 

Thought defined in light of physiological psychology. 
Dr. Dwight on thought and matter. Thought as 
emotion. Dr. Bueehner's "Force and Matter" 
quoted. Dr. Carr quoted on structure of nervous 
system to prove thought vibrations. Thought con- 
tagion. Protoplasm and radiation of electrons. 
Frank's "Psychic Phenomena, Science and Im- 
mortality" quoted, on emission of electrons from 
dissolving atoms in protoplasm. If a thought can 
be photographed its substantiality is proved. Rela- 
tion of thought photography to post-planetary 
existence. Much fraud in alleged thought pho- 
tography. Dr. Joseph Grasset's "The Marvels Be- 
yond Science," quoted. Record of Commandant 
Darget's claims for successful thought photogra- 
phy. Quotation from New York Times on Darget's 
achievements 26 

CHAPTER VI 

HAS THE SOUL A BEGINNING AND AN END? 

Haeekel's argument in the "Last Words on Evolu- 
tion," that what has a beginning must have an end- 
ing as applied to the human soul examined. The 
fallacy in the conception of the terms "absolute" 
and "infinite." Natural phenomena that begin in 
time and continue indefinitely. Motion and trans- 
mutation of energy. The germ plasm and its 
deathlessness. Binet's quotation from Weismann 
to the point. Dr. E. B. Wilson quoted on immor- 
tality of the germ cell. Prof. Ostwald's argument 
against immortality 35 

CHAPTER VII 

CAN THE UNIVERSE BE ANNIHILATED? 

Science questions the annihilation of the globe. Old 
theory abandoned. Soddy's "Matter and Energy" 
quoted. Radio-activity and the sun's radiation 
as sources of planetary heat. Ostwald's argument 

xxxi 



DESCRIPTIVE ANALYTICAL INDEX 

page 

further examined. What is "absolute destruction 
and utter annihilation?" The principle of life 
persistent and indestructible in Nature. Moore's 
"Origin of Nature and Life" quoted to prove de- 
struction of life principle in Nature impossible. 
If the planet were utterly annihilated, what would 
become of immortality of souls? The heart of 
Ostwald's fallacy. Prof. G. P. Serviss quoted on 
the mortality of the sun as applied to problem of 
human immortality. "It is not the things that 
it creates, but it is creation itself that is eternal." 
Electrons or units of energy the total composition 
of matter. Memory in electrons. E. Hering quoted 
on memory as general property of organized mat- 
ter. Haeckel on the memory of radiolaria. The 
bearing of memory in electrons on the problem of 
personal immortal existence. . . . . 41 



CHAPTER VIII 

DO PRIMITIVE LIFE-FORMS POSTULATE SOUL DEATH? 

HaeckePs argument on propagation by fission or cell 
division as disproof of immortality examined. In 
cell division no actual new cell is generated ; mother 
and daughter cells. Haeckel's famous biological 
argument fallacious. 51 

CHAPTER IX 

WHY IS DISBELIEF IN AFTER LIFE INCREASING? 

Traditional belief founded on metaphysical and pre- 
sumptive arguments. Shattered by science. Ma- 
jority of educated today doubt or disbelieve. 
Review of metaphysical foundations of belieJ^. 
Theological faith grounded simply on authority. 
Faith in Christ's resurrection and the Higher 
Criticism. Fallacy of the juridical argument. 
Butler and Kant. Fallacy or argument based on 
incompleteness of this life. Argument from affec- 
tions. Its fallacy. Leibnitz's argument reviewed. 
The weakness of Prof. Royce's argument. Dis- 

xxxii 



DESCRIPTIVE ANALYTICAL INDEX 

page 
proof of these arguments has no bearing on scien- 
tific possibility of after existence. ... 56 

CHAPTER X 

THE ASTRONOMICAL NEGATIONS 

The bearing of millions of dead worlds on problem of 
man's immortality. Examination of the doctrine 
of the final annihilation of sun and solar system. 
Death in Nature nowhere a finality. Origin of the 
moon according to G. H. Darwin. Marion Erwin's 
"Universe and the Atom" quoted. Scientific dis- 
proof of possibility of kinetic death of sun. As- 
tronomical deaths and rebirths. John Masefield 
quoted. Life-germ of worlds and planets. Astro- 
nomical facts sustain theory of possibility of 
future life 67 

CHAPTER XI 

THE ANIMAL WORLD AND THE FUTURE LIFE 

If lower animals have no future life, why should man? 
The argument examined. Bearing of arrested 
development in lower animals on the argument. 
At what moment did immortality of man's soul 
begin? Maurice Parmelee's "The Science of Hu- 
man Behavior" quoted. Correlation of central 
nervous system and consciousness. Absence of 
physical apparatus of self-consciousness in lower 
animals. Peculiar cranial formation in man, ab- 
sent in lower kingdoms, prophetic of possible after 
existence. Le Conte quoted on immortality as new 
cosmic attribute in man. Mind as a function of the 
brain. Disproof of mind's dependence on brain 
suggested by vicarious functions. Prof. Schiller's 
"Riddles of the Sphinx" quoted. Expiring brain 
may leave refined substance through which mind 
might function. 73 

CHAPTER XII 

THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL NEGATIONS 

Bearing of fact that doctrine of immortality originated 
in dreams of primitive savages. All human 

xxxiii 



DESCRIPTIVE ANALYTICAL INDEX 

page 

knowledge outcome of primitive error. Scientific 
results of secret labors of Paraselsus and 
Cagliostro. Fallacy of negation derived from 
study of primitive man. Frazer's "Belief in Im- 
mortality" quoted 82 

CHAPTER XIII 

INTIMATIONS OF PHYSICAL IMMORTALITY 

Necessity for scientific tentative agnosticism. Scien- 
tific ignorance of the origin of planetary life. 
"Modern Light on Immortality" quoted. Dr. 
Card's biological experiments and their bearing on 
problem of immortality. Maupas and Calkins re- 
ferred to. New York Times quoted on Dr. Card's 
demonstration of "dynamic condition of connective 
tissue." Life itself chemically generated. Fallacy 
of Huxley's famous dictum on dying protoplasm. 
Contradicted by modern biology. Immortality of 
germ plasm and life units. Dr. Wilson's "The 
Cdl and Heredity" quoted 86 

CHAPTER XIV ' 

SELF-PERPETUATION OF THE LIFE CELL 

Dr. Wilson quoted. Till science becomes better ac- 
quainted with nature of chemical life cell it cannot 
deny its possible perpetuity. "Psychic Phenomena, 
Science and Immorality" quoted. Secret substance 
of cell may foretell continuance of life beyond 
grave. ........ 92 

CHAPTER XV 

VITALISM AND BIOTIC ENERGY 

Biological schools at variance on doctrine of vitalism. 
Bateson's "Heredity" quoted on the actual scien- 
tific knowledge of chemistry of life. Prof. D'Arcy 
W. Thompson quoted on gulf between organic and 
inorganic matter. Dr. Minot's "Age, Growth and 
Death," on the hypothesis of vitalism. Driesch's 
conversion. Moore's "The Origin of Nature and 

xxxiv 



DESCRIPTIVE ANALYTICAL INDEX 

page 
Life" quoted on "biotic energy." So long as 
science is undecided on doctrine of vitalism, or true 
nature of life, it cannot logically deny potential 
continuance of its energy after death. . . 95 

CHAPTER XVI 

CONSCIOUSNESS AND BRAIN ACTION 

Varying theories of consciousness. Prof. Elliot quoted 
on mechanistic nature of brain action. Its fallacy 
exposed. Prof. John Fiske quoted. Conscious life 
no part of closed circuit of chemical or electrical 
action. Actual form of energy operative in 
thought and consciousness unknown. Jean Bec- 
querel quoted on immateriality of electrons and 
matter. 98 

CHAPTER XVII 

MIND AND ELECTRO-MAGNETIC V^ORLD 

Will energy and radio-active energy. Soddy's "Matter 
and Energy" quoted on nature of electro-magnetic 
world. Probability of psychic functioning in elec- 
tro-magnetic plane. Present tentative attitude of 
science. Prof. Hugh Elliot quoted on transmis- 
sion of unknown form of energy in nerve action. 
Thought and the "electro-motive change" in nerve 
vibration. Before science can postulate ultimate 
state of soul must know nature of matter through 
which consciousness functions. . . . 103 

CHAPTER XVIII 

PSYCHIC PHENOMENA AND SUBTLE FORMS OP ENERGY 

Experiences investigated by British Society for Psy- 
chical Research. The case of Rev. Clarence God- 
frey presented in "Phantasms of the Living." 
Illustrates photographic form of thought trans- 
mitted between minds. Podmore's "Studies in 
Psychical Research" quoted. Cases of spon- 
taneous hallucination. Prince Victor Dunleep 
Singh. Case of Annie Ross illustrating projection 
of thought image after death. Till science ac- 

XXXV 



DESCRIPTIVE ANALYTICAL INDEX 

page 

quaints itself with the true nature of the plane of 
matter or form of energy in which these phe- 
nomena transpire it can postulate nothing positive 
relative to continuity of life after death. Modem 
views of matter. Death unknown in matter. Per- 
petual constructive work of Nature in cyclic evolu- 
tion. Electro-magnetic plane of psychological 
functioning. Its nature wholly contradictory of 
palpable phases of matter. No known laws of Na- 
ture yet discovered that would destroy the possi- 
bility of persistent continuity after death. . 107 

CHAPTER XIX 

THE MYSTERY OF DEATH 

Death not a conscious experience. Exact moment of 
death Unknown. Sir Benjamin Ward Richard- 
son's "The Ministry of Health" quoted on scientific 
ignorance of nature of death. Dr. Alexis Carel's 
experiments prove life continues in spite of or- 
ganic dismemberment. Organs function when re- 
moved from body. None knows what psycho- 
logical, chemical or other transformation takes 
place at death. Dr. Joseph Le Conte quoted on 
difference in Nature between living and dead 
organisms. The suggestion relative to a possible 
after state indicated by the emanation of radium. 
Ignorance of the physics and chemistry of life. 
Dr. Bateson quoted. Necessity for present ag- 
nostic attitude of science 118 



BOOK n 

Scientific Limitations of Reason 

CHAPTER XX 

SUMMARY AND INVESTIGATION OF SCIENTIFIC 
NEGATIONS 

Scientific attitude and attitude of faith contrasted. 
Disproof of doctrine of alleged principle not dis- 
proof of possible fact. Soul's possible physical 

xxxvi 



DESCRIPTIVE ANALYTICAL INDEX 

page 

nature no contradiction of its potentional con- 
tinuity. Paradoxical doctrines as to nature of 
matter. Haeckel's statement corrected. Soddy's 
"Matter and Energy" quoted on present scientific 
ignorance of nature of matter. Thought interpreted 
as waves of ether or mode of motion. Possi- 
bility and suggestiveness of thought-photography. 
Bearing of this fact on possibility of after death 
continuity. Can consciousness as organized per- 
sonality aggregate a form of matter that may sur- 
vive physical death? Finality of soul demon- 
strated by initial existence proved fallacious. Im- 
mortality of germ plasm. Crookes' definition 
of fourth state of matter. The plane of matter in 
which thought and consciousness operate. Le 
Bon's explanation of four successive forms of mat- 
ter. The soul, as an electrical organization charged 
with psychic consciousness. Sir Humphrey Davy's 
contemplation. Sir William Crookes on scientific 
promise of the borderland between matter and 
force. Ostwald's fallacious objections. Haeckel's 
illustration of cell propagation as disproof of 
future life unscientific. Non return of dead no 
disproof of their non-existence. Astronomical 
dead worlds no proof of absoluteness of death in 
Nature. Duncan's "New Knowledge" quoted on 
death of planet by sun's radiation. Non-contin- 
uance of life of lower animals no disproof of possi- 
bility of human continuity. Potential evolution of 
man's psychic apparatus not comparable with that 
of lower animals. Time and place in human evolu- 
tion when self-consciousness enters. Brain and 
mind contrasted. Thought in Nature antedates 
human brain. Haeckel on centralization of ner- 
vous system and consciousness. The argument 
from the vicarious functions of organs. Moore's 
"Origin of Nature and Life" quoted on vicarious 
activity of life-cells. Primitive origin of belief in 
immortality. Does not discount possible scientific 
fact. Arrhenius quoted on natural development 
of scientific conceptions from myths. . . 125 

xxxvii 



DESCRIPTIVE ANALYTICAL INDEX 
CHAPTER XXI 

WHY SCIENCE HAS NOT ANSWERED THE RIDDLE page 

Science and ultimate realities of Nature. Protoplasm 
and final decay. Scientific interpretation of vital 
force. The nature of consciousness. The puzzle 
of thought. Atomic dissolution. Scientific igno- 
rance of ultimate essence of vital principle. Sug- 
gestions deduced from hypnotic experiments. 
Telepathy and thought transference. Man's limited 
reasoning powers awed by immensity of Nature. 144 

CHAPTER XXII 

THE BANKRUPTCY OF SCIENTIFIC THEORIES 

So-called laws of Nature but man's interpretation of 
phenomena. Fundamental laws may need restate- 
ment. Geocentric theory of the world. Coper- 
nicus. Scientific authority challenged. Galileo. 
Astronomy revolutionized. Priestley's analysis of 
the air. Phlogiston. Hypothesis of flame ex- 
ploded. Persecution of Priestley. Harvey's dis- 
covery of blood circulation. Opposition and per- 
secution. La Place's Nebular Hypothesis and 
Chamberlain's Planetesimal, theory. Ultimate de- 
struction of solar system. Equivalence between 
mechanical work and heat. Clerk Maxwell's defini- 
tion of conservation of energy. Huxley on inde- 
structibility of energy. The hypothesis challenged 
by Le Bon and Poincare. Le Bon on possible dis- 
appearance of electron and energy. Sir W. 
Crookes hypothesis of protyle. Danger in scien- 
tific ignorance. Cyrus Field and Atlantic cable. 
Cuvier and transmutation of species. Dr. Moore 
on rejection of orthodox scientific beliefs. Scien- 
tific dogmatism relative to potential immortality 
unwarranted. ... ... 148 

CHAPTER XXIII 

Schopenhauer's fallacy 
Tendency of philosophy to miscontrue logic of natural 
science. The dialogue invented by Schopenhauer 

on Immortality. Its fallacj^ Nature's germinal 

xxxviii 



DESCRIPTIVE ANALYTICAL INDEX 

page 
prophecy of consciousness in amoeba. The coter- 
minous evolution of self -consciousness and peculiar 
nervous system in man discounts Schopenhauer's 
reasoning. Significance of physical framework 
of self-consciousness in process of endless evolu- 
tion. Haeckel's latest argument analyzed and 
proved illogical 156 

BOOK ni 

Intimations of Scientific Proof 
of Immortality 

CHAPTER XXIV 

THE UNREALITY OF DEATH 

Consolation in fact science cannot disprove future life. 
Reason disturbed at pit of grave. Absolute ex- 
tinction inconceivable. Impossibility of conscious 
realization of death. The instinct of life may 
be prophetic of its perpetuity. If proof of future 
life is not possible, science may at least hint its 
possibility. 171 

CHAPTER XXV 

THE APPEAL OP NATURE 

The laws promulgated in Modern Thought on immor- 
tality discussed. Law of continuity of psychic 
activities and self-conscious continuity. Is possi- 
bility of immortality conditioned on individual 
development? Objection to conditional immor- 
tality of future life discussed. Distinction between 
human desire and fact in Nature. . . 175 

CHAPTER XXVI 

"the puzzle of the microcosm" 
Life defined as mode of motion. Evolution of con- 
sciousness and continuity of life. Dastre's state- 
ment. Law of vibration in manifestation of life. 
Evolution of gradation of consciousness traced in 

xxxix 



DBSCRIPnVE ANALYTICAL INDEX 



OEganSy nerve amd Uood. Haeekei's psydia-plasiii. 
The Uood of Tnaimnala distiiigiDshed fran blood of 
an otho' animals. Doctrine of ev'ofaitifni of psy- 
dneal faenltieB stated b j Ford. Does meehanistie 
tiietRj of sonl postulate its essential annihilation? 
Study of protoplasm in tinnking, f eding, wiDingL 
Dr. Wilson on TaKdity of meehjoustie hypothesis. 
Wilson's and Batescm's eantion eontrasted with 
Haeckd's and Yerworm's pasiti¥enes& Haefkd 
on ebemieo-pl^Tsieal qualities of earbtm as eaose 
of KfeL Wi^on's doubt of eSdencv of medumistift 
piineiple;. Problen :i :j1t : i f psydbo-plasni. 
Wilscm's physi<Mc ^- i.. fz „ :i of tie nature 
of genins. Myst^r :i :r_- _. .hi. ;:: 

pmade of tibe micr: ;:-ii Z r r s _:t: _7=i:il 
eonfosion. Wiis-: i ^ ~t :l r tLt :: ii rma of 
Bfc. Lankester's isiiir. I-iziisizis Bible of 
Natme^ qnoted. 179 

IHAPTER XXVll 

UUZ I1"IL7 "T ±->"T" SUTBTLE FQSMS OF lElAnXS 

: .ZLiTs :Li 11 i !t planes of matter. Matter a 
::_ist :: iiar" i "-rrford cat eunstitution of 
z_ Tti ^11 i; on nature of matter. 

Zi.t1^7 :: :ii : ; :i; ; ; i^iass, ete., in tenis of 
T 1 1= I: -^_ 1 _: 1 jgvjjqble energy in 
1 ! - i! — f mattor: Inert 

— _i:i' 11 "ir . Ill i?TOi?erties of 



CHAPTEP. XXVin 

;r::r: :_:riii Ii, J^i "ii- WiSson 



ii 



DESCRIPTIVE ANALYTICAL INDEX 

page 
ness. Brain and nervous system as apparatus for 
conveyance of vibrations. Does thought function 
in field of electro-magnetism? Thought construed 
as ray of electrons. Do rays from brain cells pho- 
tograph thought? Inter-atomic energy of proto- 
plasm source of vitalistic properties. Mystery of 
protoplasm almost solved. Moore on origin of 
life in colloidal matter. Correlation of thought 
as dynamic principle with inter-atomic energy. 
Psychic phenomena as activities of electro- 
magnetic plane of matter. Explanation of spirit- 
ism. The will as volic energy. Telepathy. Stig- 
mata. Historical cases. Explained by electron 
theory of thought. Hawthorne's "Scarlet Letter," 
interpreted in light of this theory. . . 202 

CHAPTER XXIX 

THE DYNAMIC ENERGY OF THOUGHT 

Thought cannot function in vacuum. New inter- 
pretation of electricity. The use of "radiant mat- 
ter" in thought activity. Clairvoyance and elec- 
tron theoiy of thought. Illustrations. . . 215 

CHAPTER XXX 

THOUGHT PHOTOGRAPHY AND SPIRIT IDENTITY 

If thought photograph nol yet demonstrated as fact 
laws of Nature suggest its possibility. Univer- 
sality of radio-active energy. Radiant matter and 
brain cells. How thoughts organize radiant matter 
in forms. The will and radiant matter. Modus 
operandi of will energy in electrons. In what sense 
thoughts are things. How thought forms can be 
detected. The material transmission of thoughts 
from brain to brain. Hypnotism. Scientific hypo- 
thesis explaining possibility of "spirit" pho- 
tography. A reported case of spontaneous appari- 
tion and its photograph. If true could be ac- 
counted for scientifically. Concentration and 
visualization of thought. Scientific tendency to 
regard ghosts, etc., as mental transmissions. Dis- 

xli 



DESCRIPTIVE ANALYTICAL INDEX 

page 
tinction between alleged "spirits" and thought 
forms of radiant matter. Bearing of heredity on 
electron theory of thought. Existence of discamate 
spirits not yet demonstrated. Mrs. Pipers mani- 
festations. Nature of dreams illustrating possi- 
ble construction of personalities through sub- 
conscious energy of medium. Problem of identity 
of "spirits." Maurice Maeterlinck's conclusion. 
Floumoy's opinion. Sir Oliver Lodge's positive 
conviction. Questions such conclusions must an- 
swer. Field of psychic research necessarily re- 
stricted to interpretation of thought embodiments. 
Absence of proof of spirit return does not negative 
scientific discovery of possible after life. . 220 

CHAPTER XXXI 

SIR OLIVER LODGE AND "rAYHOND" 

"Raymond and Life After Death" reviewed. Not a 
case presented that cannot be explained on theory 
of electronic nature of thought. Lodge's explana- 
tions proved fallacious. Identity of Raymond not 
proved. Apparent deception practiced with pho- 
tographs on which Lodge implicitly depended. 
Flammarion on universal tendency of "mediums" 
to trick and cheat. Lodge's unconscious exposition 
apparent of fraud practiced on him by "medium" 
Peters. Mrs. Cheves and Raymond photograph. 
Ample time for fraud in procuring photographs. 
How knowledge of photograph might have been 
psychologically transmitted by RajTnond at death. 
No prejudice of author against proof of spiritism. 
Science must have indisputable evidence. . 240 

CHAPTER XXXn 

A LABORATORY SUGGESTION 

Edward A. Bobbet's ingenious conception. Dr. W. J. 
Crawford's "The Reality of Psychic Phenomena." 
His "cantilever theory" of psychic energy and the 
electron theory of thought compared. . . 266 

xlii 



DESCRIPTIVE ANALYTICAL INDEX 

page 
CHAPTER XXXIII 

THE ELECTRON THEORY OP THOUGHT AND THE 
AFTER LIFE 

The nature of consciousness. Graduated formation of 
delicate apparatus for developing consciousness. 
Germinal consciousness in low life forms. Self- 
consciousness and central nervous system. Are 
infants self-conscious? Self -consciousness and 
frontal lobe. Haeckel's "Riddle of Universe" 
quoted. Functions of mind and cell groups. Prof. 
J. Symington on "Variations in Development of 
Skull and Brains." The biologic cell and the 
psychic "cell." Psychological cell groups should 
be studied like biologic groups. As physiological 
cell groups (organs) can be removed from body 
and still function, why cannot psychic cell groups 
(thought forms) be extracted from skull and 
operate independently? Psychic groups and per- 
sonality. Affinity between psychic cell groups. 
Prophecy of physical continuity of life on this 
planet based on same facts as prophecy of psychic 
continuity. Possibility of permanent integrity of 
personal ego. Evolution of memory. Haeckel's 
strictures on immortality. His argument analysed 
and proved fallacious 275 

CHAPTER XXXIV 

CONTINUITY OF LIFE AND IMMATERIALITY OP MATTER 

Criticism of author's hypothesis by Lascelles Aber- 
crombie. The ego and plane of electrons. Dun- 
can's "New Knowledge" quoted on universality of 
radio-active energy. What becomes finally of 
radio-active particles that fly off the body? Func- 
tion of memory in life of the atom. Memory in 
the electron. Do electrons return to earth? Le 
Bon on "intra-atomic energy." Electrons barred 
from re-forming original matter. Independent 
radio-active emanation. Electron and "mass." 
Duration of emanations. Soddy quoted on "mass- 
less" matter. Soddy's contemplation of "mass 

xliii 



DESCRIPTIVE ANALYTICAL INDEX 

page 

without matter." Transmutation of matter. In- 
duced radio-activity. Duncan on emanation "X." 
Self -perpetuating power of radium-emanation. 
Hint as to transmutation of psychic substance after 
death. Hint in processes of Nature as to possi- 
bility of continuity after death. Continuity and 
immortality contrasted. Continuity and character. 
Potential energy of the Ego. Personal immor- 
tality or re-incarnation. Limitations of "immor- 
taUty." 287 

CHAPTER XXXV 

THE NATURE OF IMMORTALITY 

Continuity after death not immortality. Transforming 
phases of soul-life through which the Ego mani- 
fests itself. Ultra-refined material instrumental- 
ity of will-energy. The Ego and mass of elec- 
trical corpuscle. If Ego possesses mass will it con- 
tinue to be manifested? Electrical corpuscle not 
the last reduction of matter. If phases of matter 
vary with the nature of involved energy, then why 
may not the Ego, being a phase of energy, as- 
similate and organize continuously refined phases 
of matter through which to express itself? Evolv- 
ing manifestations of the Ego through ever in- 
creasingly refined phases of matter illustrated by 
the water of the ocean and its overlying strata of 
vaporous and gasseous atmospheres. Will the Ego 
make cyclic retui-n to this plane of matter or 
will it continue forever on invisible planes? Im- 
mortality or reincarnation? Immortality as an 
endless existence impossible to realize at present. 
Immortality conceived as continued existence in 
time 304 



CHAPTER XXXVI 

THE MORAL VALUE OP SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH 

Consolation afforded by studying laws and promises 
of Nature. Religious attitude avoided in this 

xliv 



DESCRIPTIVE ANALYTICAL INDEX 

page 
treatise. Why? Shakespeare's Sonnet on death 
of Death. Science, not blind faith, source of hope. 310 

CHAPTER XXXVII 

THE INSTINCT OF IMMORTAL LIFE 

Tolstoi's contemplations. His "Master and Man." The 
author's peculiar dream. Walt Whitman's Hymn 
to Death. Scientific necessity of investigating the 
source and cause of the instinct of endless life. 
Arrhenius "Life of the Universe" quoted. Evolu- 
tion of primitive myths and superstition into 
scientific principles. Great awakening of knowl- 
edge simultaneous with breaking of old civiliza- 
tions. Immortality in memory of departed. Con- 
ception of planetary physical immortality. Mrs. 
Heman's poem. 315 

CHAPTER XXXVIII 

THE GATEV7AY TO ANOTHER SPHERE 

Undesirability of perpetual personal life on this planet. 
Ethical value of dream of after life. Further de- 
fence and explanation of hypothesis advanced in 
this work. The deathless life substance inherent in 
humanity. Invisible life substance. Organic 
planetary life and ultra-microscopical matter. 
Deathless life unit (germ) suggestive of deathless 
soul-germ. Prophetic hint of the latter. As we 
enter this life a cell of protoplasm, may we not 
enter next as cell or germ of psycho-plasm? 325 

CHAPTER XXXIX 

THUS SCIENCE ANSWERS 

The great war marks a bloody hiatus in the vast path of 
progress. Death the fate of every individual. 
History and Science conspire to console us. Death 
and disaster can never write Finis to story of 
human life. War has invented instrumentalities 
of civilization, prophecying permanent benefit to 
mankind. War has been the inspirer of Science. 

xlv 



DESCRIPTIVE ANALYTICAL INDEX 

page 
Science indicates Nature does not waste her forces. 
Impossible to conceive annihilation. Death is 
transition. Rhythm of Nature throbs with cyclic 
deaths and resurrections. Finality not found. 
Life the all prevailing principle of existence. Only 
forms of life change and disappear. Immortality 
scientifically suggested by the subtle element in 
the human body, that functions as instrumentality 
of the mind or psychic powers. Consciousness 
and electrons. Nature's answer. . . . 333 



xlvi 



BOOK I 



Scientific Negations 
of Immortality 



CHAPTER I 

The Demands of the Scientific 
Method 

To approach a subject, which has so long fascinated 
and perplexed the human mind, by the scientific 
method, may, indeed, seem to be an unnecessarily im- 
pertinent folly. 

Why demand the demonstrative method of science 
— where faith and, as many insist, only faith can 
satisfy? Is it not far better either to believe or dis- 
believe and cease to trouble the mind with problems 
that are apparently insoluble? 

Even cool headed scientists are warning us that on 
mystical matters we must not introduce the severe 
methods of materialistic interpretation but must leave 
room for faith where we must needs stare blankly into 
Nature. 

* * It is important for the materialist to realize, ' ' says 
Benjamin Moore ("Origin of Nature and Life'* Home 
Univ. Library p 23) ''that his methods of experimen- 
tation cannot be extended to touch or test things of 
a purely psychical nature, and it is equally important 
for the psychologist to remember that he has only so 
far been dealing with materialistic models, and 
studying the substructure in which mental acts occur. 
Neither set of philosophers, whatever their beliefs, 
can prove or disprove anything as to the existence of 
mind apart from matter, or what are the subtle re- 
lationships of mind and matter.*' 

[1] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

It is a serious question, however, whether this is 
not yielding to the attitude of the average mind and 
relinquishing from labor in a field where there 
are prophetically only insignificant results- to be 
attaiaed. It is easier to believe or disbelieve than it 
is to probe and think and search. 

But such is not the way of truth. If the future 
existence of a being who once tenanted the flesh is a 
fact in Nature, its final discovery must not be de- 
spaired of; and judging by the success of science in 
mastering heretofore seemingly insoluble problems 
in the world we ought to feel that the discovery of an 
after life, if true, will yield to search and analysis, 
as did the rate of velocity of a ray of light or the 
composition of the once hypothetical atom of the 
chemist. 

To disbelieve and thus to shut down the bars to the 
approach of truth, no less than to believe, and to 
ignore critical investigation, is the way neither of 
science nor common sense. 

It is better to guess and to think than not to think 
at all. To guess wrong does no harm, for, at least, 
it keeps the mind active and the road of progress un- 
barred by any obstacle. But to guess, and then to 
stop still at the guess, and set it up as the shibboleth 
of truth, is the way of aU error. 

''Imagination is fundamentally as important for 
a student of natural science as it is for a poet or a 
devotee of religious belief. It is by the use of the 
imagination that science is led from discovery to 
discovery, but the essential difference lies in this, 
that in the legitimate domain of natural science the 
work of the imagination must be proven by the test of 

[2] 



THE DEMANDS OF THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD 

experiment" says Moore, whieli is of course indis- 
putable. But we must ask why should this same imag- 
ination be debarred when scientifically investigating 
a supposedly mystical experience, even though 
apparently the test of experiment cannot be applied. 
Does not the crux of the problem lie in that very 
possibility? Are we sure that the strange experi- 
ence which leads man to believe in an after life 
cannot be experimented with according to ''material- 
istic models", and subjected to the necessary test 
of laboratory analysis? 

The end of this life may be, indeed, where 

*'0n the darkened death bed dies the brain, 

That flared three seventy times in seventy years;" 

but to assume that it is so, without proof, is to let the 
blind lead the blind, into the possible ditch of 
ignorance. 

There will probably never be an end to the discus- 
sion of the possible immortality of human life in an 
after world until the issue is scientifically decided 
one way or another. The crux of the present issue 
is that two extreme views exist, both of which claim to 
give finality to the problem. The one is positive the 
other negative. There are those who insist there is 
ample and unqualified proof of the after life of mor- 
tals, and those who insist that not only is there no 
proof at all of such a life but that on the contrary 
there is absolute disproof of such an alleged fact. 

Now I propose to omit in the first part of this 
discussion all reference to the alleged proofs of im- 

[3] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

mortality, and to pay exclusive attention to the 
so-called disproofs. 

If it is absolutely disproved and that truth is re- 
vealed in Nature then of course all further discussion 
is useless and the human mind may be at rest. In 
the second part of this treatise I shall review the so- 
called proofs and the answers thereto by those who 
claim otherwise. 

We must, however, not lose sight of the logical 
question at issue. The issue at present is not whether 
any doctrines of im mortality have been disproved; 
or whether any of the alleged proofs of immortality 
have been overthrown or disqualified. 

With such problems we have for the moment noth- 
ing to do. We are asking whether or no Science has 
presented any absolute proofs that in Nature not 
only no such a fact has been discovered, but that on 
the contrary Nature absolutely asserts that there is 
no such fact. 

We have not here to do with opinion, and its ac- 
curacy or inaccuracy ; we have only to do with facts ; 
is immortality as a fact proven absolutely by science 
to be not only imaginary but utterly impossible? So 
long as science cannot prove this as a finality, then, 
of course there remains the possibility of such an 
after life. We have here to do only with the dis- 
proof of the alleged fact, not with the disproof of an 
opinion or the disqualification of an alleged proof. 

In discussing the possibility of an after life it 
seems ever necessary to call attention to the difference 
between a scientific study of the problem and its 
approach from the angle of ''faith". It seems, much 

[4] 



THE DEMANDS OF THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD 

to my surprise, quite difficult for many to keep the 
distinction clearly in mind while contemplating this 
problem. In the scientific pursuit of a truth we are 
not endeavoring to please or gratify a traditional pre- 
dilection, nor are we attempting to force a conclusion 
that is not consonant with the facts of experience and 
the laws of Nature. We are endeavoring merely 
to hear what Nature may indicate, or what we feel 
justified in determining as her actual laws. 

The wrench, however, seems to come to the feelings 
of the investigator, when Nature, apparently, de- 
mands a decision which is directly contrary to the 
predilection or traditional notion implanted by 
teaching and hereditary influence. 

This has always been the storm centre between 
belief or theory and discovery. It was so when 
Galileo undertook to reveal his discovery of what the 
heavens taught, contrary to what had long been be- 
lieved; and it is so whenever any discovery or in- 
vention runs counter to the common grain of accepted 
culture. It has been argued by some that there is no 
ultimate discovery of any truth in Nature ; that what 
we call a truth is simply a mode of thinking that 
accommodates the practical demand of our needs; 
that we think a thing so or so, because of a certain 
crisis in our experience, and by so thinking we relieve 
the tension. 

''There is no such thing as absolute thought," says 
Irving King (Monist v.l5 p 261) ''for thought is an 
essential process of abstraction from an undefined 
matrix of possible experiences for the solution of a 
particular crisis . . . That which relieves the ten- 
sion is undoubtedly an aspect of reality, but it is 

[5] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

tnie of the whole only as the whole is in contact with 
the particular." 

This point of view, the pragmatic, insinuates that 
we never discover a truth that may be regarded as an 
absolute reality; all we do or can discover is a 
temporary relief in thought to a critical juncture, 
over which we must be lifted by an hypothesis. This 
explains no less, according to this philosophy, the 
doctrine of the divine inspiration of the Bible, than 
the theory of atoms, or the nebular hypothesis. 

In short that only is truth, which is a happy guess 
for the time being, and relieves the mind of its ten- 
sion because of a stone wall which man has reached 
in research or experience. Every alleged truth is 
only a temporary bridge lifted in imagination over 
the gulf of universal ignorance. 

Therefore any interpretation of experience which 
helps man in the conduct of life, which relieves him 
of mental discomfiture that would interfere with the 
dignity and morality of his conduct, is an actual 
reality and must be accepted as truth. "It is notori- 
ous," says this same writer, "that no argument for 
the inspiration of the Scriptures, for immortality, 
for the divinity of Christ is convincing to any one 
who does not believe in them already as facts of 
immediate experience. ' ' 

If this were to end the discussion it would be a 
happy cutting of the Gordian knot of scientific and 
philosophical problems. One wonders, however, if 
this deduction is readily made from the indoctrina- 
tion of theology, whether it could as well be discerned 
in the discoveries of science. 

It is difficult to apprehend the notion that the 

[6] 



THE DEMANDS OF THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD 

hypothesis of Laplace, the revelations of the Galilean 
telescope, Dalton's atomic theory, and von Fraun- 
hofer's spectrum analysis were the result of merely 
the willingness to believe. Of course a mental crisis 
had been reached in research, which these hypotheses 
for the time being quieted, and therefore satisfied the 
moral demands of thought. But the difference in the 
experience of the theological and the scientific 
thinkers lies in the fact that the one goes out of his 
way to discover a possible truth in Nature, whereas 
the other attempts to run away from it. 

If, however, the pragmatic theory of science and 
philosophy were true, then it would merely indicate 
to us that any religious doctrine, or imagined reality, 
which at one time had been accepted because it satis- 
fied the moral requisites of an age, would cease to be 
true so soon as an age no longer required its assis- 
tance in its ethical conduct. So soon as an age 
outgrew the moral validity of the beliefs in any 
theological doctrine, so soon that doctrine would cease 
to be true or a reality. 

By the light of this theory one need only go from 
age to age and discern the moral effects of any doc- 
trine, that is, the application of the doctrine to the 
ethical requisites of any age, to determine its reality 
or non reality. 

Judged from this philosophy all the doctrines of 
Christianity are rapidly becoming untrue, that is 
they cease to be realities in Nature, because they 
cease to be necessary to the ethical conduct of the 
race. So far as the reality or non reality of immor- 
tality, then, is concerned the discussion relative to it 

[7] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAE 

may as well cease at once, according to pragmatism; 
for its truth as a finality will never be discovered, as 
it will be retained as a truth in Nature so long as 
belief in it is a demand of the ethical conduct of man, 
and cease to be a truth so soon as its moral function 
ceases. 

But it seems to me science wiU. never be satisfied 
with such a decision. 

Whatever we may conclude as to the validity or 
non-validity of an alleged truth, we cannot deny that 
the acceptance or rejection of such a validity is 
always in keeping with what man thinks is necessarj^ 
to his ethical conduct or his mental peace. In that 
field pragmatism is thoroughly operative. We do 
always determine the meaning of our experiences in 
such a way as to bridge us over a gulf of suffering; 
in such a way as to calm a mental crisis or relieve 
moral discomfiture. 

It may therefore safely be recognized, so far as 
belief in immortality is concerned, that it will ever 
be accepted or rejected as a doctrine according as 
the individual feels that it is required either to 
relieve a mental tension, in his philosophy, or a moral 
disturbance in his conduct of life. 

But this is far away from the study itself of a 
fact in Nature, whether or no the mortal lives after 
death in another life. We are here concerned only 
with the alleged certainty of certain scientific inves- 
tigators that they have forever solved the problem 
and attained a negative answer. 



[8] 



CHAPTER 11 

Why Philosophy Has Failed 

To explain the object of this treatise, let me illus- 
trate. It is contended by many that if any or all of 
the arguments advanced in favor of immortality are 
disproved then we have proof sufficient that there is 
in Nature no such thing as an after life. For instance 
if we return to the classic arguments found in Plato's 
Dialogues, as those advanced by Socrates, and refute 
them, what shall we have left over as a possible proof 
or disproof of the theory of immortality? Will the 
acceptance or the rejection of those arguments have 
any bearing at all on the real issue? 

In the ** Republic*' for instance Socrates is rea- 
soning with Glaucon and says : ''You admit that every- 
thing has a good and an evil ; . . . .in everything 
or almost everything there is an inherent evil and 
disease .... The vice and evil which are in- 
herent in each are the destruction of each; and if 
these do not destroy them there is nothing else that 
wiU .... Consider then, Glaucon, unless some 
bodily evil can produce an evil of the soul, we must 
not suppose that the soul, which is one thing, can be 
dissolved by any merely external evil which belongs 
to another. ' ' Again he says : " If the inherent natural 
vice or evil of the soul is unable to kill or destroy her, 
hardly will that which is appointed to the destruction 
of some other body, destroy a soul or anything else 
except that of which it was appointed to be the destruc- 
tion .... But the soul which cannot be destroyed 
by an evil, whether inherent or external, must exist 
forever; and if existing forever, must be immortal.'' 

[9] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

Now, palpably such a puerile ar^ment as this, 
though it prevailed as effective for many centuries, 
can be easily overthrown; for it arbitrarily assumes 
that the soul is a distinct, simple, unextended, and 
immaterial substance, inherently incapable of de- 
struction from within or without. Modern psychol- 
ogy utterly demolishes this metaphysical presumption 
and makes the argument appear ridiculous. ^ 

In the same manner almost every argument 
advanced to favor the theory of immortality, based 
on pure metaphysics, and void of scientific support, 
may be shown to be false and untenable. Even if we 
carefully study the most recent of these arguments, 
or presumptions, advanced by the late Professor 
William James, the so-called ''permissive" argument, 
we shall find, likewise, that it cannot be sustained 
under logical analysis. He argues that the infinite is 
surcharged with the "life of souls", and when the 
brain acts these souls, so to speak, may shine through 
it and variously display themselves. ' ' Suppose that the 
whole universe of material things .... should 
turn out to be a mere surface veil of phenomena 

i"My final conclusion about the substantial Soul is that it explains 
nothing and guarantees nothing. Its successive thoughts are 
the only intelligible and verifiable things about it, and definitely 
to ascertain the correlations of these with brain-processes is 
as much as psychology can empirically do. From the meta- 
physical point of view, it is true that one may claim that the 
correlations have a rational ground; and if the word Soul 
could be taken to mean merely some such vague problematical 
ground, it would be unobjectionable. But the trouble is that 
it professes to give the ground in positive terms of a very 
dubiously credible sort." (James' "Psychology" vol. 1, 350.) 

"Scientific psychology is a creation of the present century. It 
differs in three principal ways from the speculative psychology 
which preceded it. (1) It is freed entirely from the influence 
of philosophy (. . . metaphysics) and it has done this most 
effectually by insisting that mind is to be examined as a 
structure, and not merely as a group of functions." (Titchener, 
"Outlines of Psychology" p 28.) 

[10] 



WHY PHILOSOPHY HAS FAILED 

keeping back, or hiding, the world of genuine reality. 
Suppose that 

Life, like a dome of many colored glass, 
Stains the white radiance of eternity. 

Admit that our brains are such thin, half transparent 
places in the veil. What will happen? Why, as the 
white radiance comes through the dome, with all 
sorts of staining and distortion printed on it by the 
glass, even so, the genuine matter of reality, the life 
of souls, will break through our several beings onto 
this world in all sorts of restricted forms," etc. 

Manifestly this is pure assumption with not the 
least possible scientific verification, and may there- 
fore be dismissed as a poetic fantasy. Nevertheless, 
if any and all arguments which have been advanced, 
or may yet be conceived, shall be demonstrated as 
false and fallacious, that fact of itself, would not, 
through their default, disprove the possible reality of 
an after life. These theories are simply straw men 
presented to be cast down by more agile minds than 
what conceived and constructed them. Their dis- 
proof establishes nothing. 

If we are to learn what science actually has 
accomplished in the field of discovery relative to a 
possible future life, we must investigate the argu- 
ments which profess to disprove the alleged fact in 
Nature, and not be satisfied with the overthrowal of 
a merely arbitrary or presumptive argument advanced 
in its favor. In other words the disproof of an 
alleged proof, does not in itself involve the actual 
disproof of a possible fact. What arguments have 
been advanced to disprove the fact in Nature alone 
concern us and these now we shall proceed to examine ? 

[11] 



CHAPTER III 

The Materialistic Negations 

The first of these arguments is the physiological. 
In the language of Haeckel C' Riddle '* p. 204) **The 
physiological argument shows that the human soul 
is not an independent, immaterial substance, but, 
like the soul of the higher animals, merely a coUective 
title for the sum-total of man's cerebral functions; 
and these are just as much determined by physical 
and chemical processes as any other vital functions/' 

The definition of the soul in its physical phases, 
here given by Haeckel, is undoubtedly correct and 
will be so accepted by all careful thinkers. But does 
the result logically follow? That is, if what we call 
the soul is merely the sum-total of the cerebral 
functions of man, does the thinking principle cease 
when the chemical and physical processes of the brain 
also cease ? In other words, when the brain dies does 
thought or the thinking energy also die? 

In order to answer this question with scientific 
logic we must first ask another. That question is. 
Does Nature think? Is there a process of thinking 
going on in the universe, antecedent to the generation 
of man on earth? 

If it can be shown that there is such a process and 
that man himself in the exercise of his cerebral 
functions is the product of this cosmic psychic 
process, it will have a serious bearing on the so-called 

[12] 



THE MATERIALISTIC NEGATIONS 

physiological argument against immortality. Let ns 
study, then, the question: Does Nature think; is the 
entire Cosmos built on a logical basis; and is the 
human brain itself but the product of this universal 
ratiocination ? 

A brief consideration of natural phenomena will, 
I think, prove that cosmic thinking is a process in 
Nature long antecedent to the development of a brain 
in animal or man. If we descend to the lowest form 
of matter and observe its origin and development in 
the world, we shall find it difficult to believe that it 
does not involve a process which is the direct result 
of a rational principle in Nature. 

We know that the chemical molecules are the 
product of the mathematically accurate association 
of atomic units, and that wherever it is impossible to 
correlate such affinities the specific molecule can- 
not be generated. It is quite impossible to believe that 
it requires a process of thinking in the human brain 
to detect the mathematic valency, in H^O, either in 
its analysis or synthesis, and not to believe that some- 
thing akin to the same process must have been active 
in Nature when these elements combined to make a 
molecule of water. 

It is not necessary to assume some pre-existing 
cosmic, individual mind wherein this thinking con- 
sciously acted, to accept the deduction that Nature 
thinks in the operation of all her phenomena. 

There may be a process of unconscious as weU as 
conscious thinking. In fact we have learned in the 
profounder studies of modern psychology that the 
larger part of the thinking in the human mind, or 

[13] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

brain, is unconscious. Therefore it is not unscien- 
tific or presumptuous to assume an unconscious 
thinking process in Nature. But whatever the psy- 
chological process may be, that something akin to 
thought inheres in natural activities is a necessary 
deduction from the fact that the apprehension and 
analysis of these phenomena by man require a men- 
tal process we call thinking. 

In order to understand Nature we must appreciate 
the fact that she once existed in a chaotic state and 
that when in that state all the ultimate elements of 
which her phenomena are composed were reduced to 
a condition of absolute identity. Chemists and 
physicists now inform us that they have succeeded in 
reducing matter to a state of such identity. 

"The electron is the ultimate unit of matter", 
says Harry C. Jones (In Electrical Nature of Matter 
p 22). The atoms are made up of electrons, or dis- 
embodied electrical charges, in rapid motion; the 
atom of one elementary substance differing from the 
atoms of another elementary substance only in the 
number and arrangement of the electrons contained in 
it. Thus we have at last the ultimate unit of matter 
of which all forms of matter are composed. ^ 

Now this last unit of matter is always the same, 
and when Nature was in a chaotic condition it simply 
meant that there was absolute equilibrium between 

^"It is now realized that these indivisible atoms, uncreatable and 
indestructible, which Newton supposed to be turned out com- 
pletely formed by the Creator, are themselves composed of 
thousands of smaller particles. . . . The atom, just like the 
chernical molecule at a different stage, or the fixed organic 
species of the biologist, is a point of stable equilibrium in 
upward evolution." ("Origin of Matter and Life", Moore. 
P 42.) 

[14] 



THE MATERIALISTIC NEGATIONS 

all these ultimate identical units; differentiation 
being impossible because each unit oscillated to the 
same rhythm as all the other units. 

Not till the primary equilibrium broke up ; not till 
certain strains in the ether slipped away from the 
rest; was matter as we now know it possible. The 
first strain of ether that slipped away from the ether- 
mass was the first unit of matter, the first ion, or 
electrical charge. Once free it sought for companions, 
and could find these only as other units slipped away 
and moved in such manner as to make a union with 
it possible. 

Now the question is. How came these primal units 
finally so to associate in precise mathematical pro- 
portions as to aggregate into the great multitude of 
things that we call the Cosmos ? One says it was the 
result of Chance. 

Nature after infinite aeons of concussion and in- 
termixture resulted in the marvellous stable union 
of elements that constitute what we now regard as the 
static universe. It may be so. But does that in- 
ference neutralize the conclusion that Nature exer- 
cised thought during the process of the admixtures? 
To answer this question we must first answer another. 
What is Thought? 

Is not thought a mental effort to bring differen- 
tiable elements into logical relationship? And what 
is a logical relationship? Is it other than the estab- 
lishment of such associations as are necessary for 
certain ends and uses? Is it not true that in all 
Nature purposive relationship is discerned? We do 
not mean by this antecedent, primordial design, uni- 

[15] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

versal, purposive intention; but that each element of 
the universe is so related to all others as to permit 
the establishment of ultimate relations which are 
logical and intentional. 

While Haeckel, for instance, is compelled to deny 
*'the anthropomorphic notion of a deliberate archi- 
tect or ruler of the world, " as he says in his Riddle ; 
on the same page he admits that *'the idea of design 
has a very great significance and application in the 
organic world. We do undeniably perceive a pur- 
pose in the structure and the life of an organism. 
The plant and the animal seem to be controlled by a 
definite design in the combination of their several 
parts, just as clearly as we see in the machine which 
man invents and constructs". 

This is true and had Haeckel only bethought him- 
self that the design cannot be as clearly discerned 
in the universe at large because of the limitations of 
the human mind to perceive it, he would not have 
fallen into the inconsistency of saying in a few para- 
graphs previous that "the idea of * design' has wholly 
disappeared from this vast province of science". 
C' Riddle of the Universe" pp 260-61.) 

Matter thrown together conglomerately and in a 
manner that makes a possible constructive end un- 
attainable, might be said to be the result of Chance. 
But matter, thrown together in such manner that the 
association is directly amenable to specific ends and 
uses, cannot be said to be the result of absolute Chance, 
but must be the effect of a certain tendency inherent 
in the elements that makes the logical association a 
possibility. 

[16] 



THE MATERIALISTIC NEGATIONS 

In fact to say that any effect in Nature is the result 
of Chance is to beg the question ; for, whatever comes 
to pass must be the result of a tendency existing in 
the object or element to effect certain results. If 
there did not exist an antecedent, inherent tendency 
in the electrons to unite in specific ratios for the 
generation of specific elements, then such elements 
were impossible and the universe would not exist. 
As J. Arthur Thomson says, *'It is difficult to see 
much meaning in the term (Chance) except that we 
are very ignorant of the antecedent conditions." 

Could we know all about the elements that enter 
into the composition, we would doubtless be able to 
show the exact reason why they unite as they do. 
That is, if we had infinite knowledge of the universe 
we would doubtless be able to perceive the "purpose" 
or ** design" inherent in each atom, that Haeckel 
admits we do discern in all forms of organic matter. 
The common error of the chance theorists, the Caden- 
tists, may I call them, "" is that they postulate a theory 
on the basis of ignorance. What they call Chance is 
simply natural action, the origin and necessity of 
which is beyond man's apprehension. * 

We are ignorant of all the forces that play upon 
the electrons and atoms, and therefore cannot fore- 

=From Latin Cado — to fall. 

*"Tlie mystery of life is often spoken of as if it were the crown- 
ing mystery of all things. . . . But the riddle of the universe 
lies much deeper than that. The evolution of life from in- 
organic materials is only one stage more mysterious than the 
evolution of any one form of matter from another, . . . The 
fundamental mystery lies in the existence of those entities, of 
things, which we call matter and energy, and in the existence 
of the natural laws which correlate them and cause all those 
things to happen, which the natural philosopher observes and 
classifies and correlates, but cannot explain in one single in- 
stance. (Moore "Origin of Life and Matter," Moore p. 17-19.) 
(Boldface type by the author.) 

[17] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

see why they act as they do; but we do know that 
they unite in exact mathematical proportions, and it 
is difficult to understand how a mathematical propo- 
sition can be worked out in natural phenomena with- 
out the process that we would call thinking. 

We certainly know that man consciously thinks 
when he is engaged in mathematical labors; consider 
how many centuries of hard thinking it required of 
the human mind merely to find out that very secret 
of Nature to which we are now referring. 

Is it not legitimate to ask why, if it requires so 
much mental activity to discover a logical process in 
Nature, should it not require as much if not consid- 
erably more mental activity to originate and perfect 
the process we are contemplating? 

Certainly the man who conceived and constructed 
a watch is far more intelligent than the man who 
takes it apart and again sets it together. The latter 
has extracted its combining elements and has learned 
the rationale of their relations. He had a very con- 
siderable labor to accomplish this. But the labor of 
the man who created all these elements and conceived 
their logical relations, that is, who invented the 
''design" that made the watch possible, must have 
been very much more intelligent. 



[18] 



CHAPTER IV 

Does Nature Think? 

If it be said that thinking cannot be postulated of 
Nature because there is in Nature so far as we know an 
utter absence of conscious activity, we need but re- 
turn to an analysis of man to find the fallacy in the 
objection. It is now well known that many of the 
most difficult mental processes within the capacity 
of the human mind are unconscious processes. 

We have what are known as mathematical freaks, 
who accomplish wonders that seem to be miracles to 
the ordinary man. These mathematical prodigies all 
operate their minds in these most difficult mathe- 
matical labors unconsciously. We have the well 
known story of the creation of Kubla Khan by 
Coleridge in a dream: R. W. L. Stevenson's ''dream- 
brownies," and many other like experiences. Of 
course these are unconscious processes within the 
instrument of the brain; Nature, as we may say, 
thinks without a brain; but if unconscious thinking 
is possible within a brain, how much more may it be 
possible in uncerebrated activities. 

Just as synthesis requires a higher intelligence 
than analysis, we must appreciate the fact that a 
higher intelligence is required by synthetical Na- 
ture than by interpretative and analytical man. 

We cannot but regard Nature as thinking much 
more profoundly in the origination and development 

[19] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

of all her material agencies and processes, than is 
the mind of man when merely discovering and 
analyzing those processes. If we can rightly declare 
that the human mind thinks when dissecting matter 
and discerning its inmost component elements, then 
how can we regard Nature other than as thinking 
when she assembles these elements in the infinitely 
complex manner that the Cosmos reveals?^ 

To say with Lord Kelvin and Lucretius, that the 
universe came into existence as the result of ''the 
fortuitous concourse of atoms", is but to admit our 
ignorance of the nature and inherent qualities of the 
atoms. As Professor Thomson says, "What does 
fortuitous concourse of atoms mean, unless simply a 
concourse whose antecedent conditions are unknown 
tons?" 

Were we absolutely acquainted with these ante- 
cedent conditions we would be able to trace the 

^"Throughout the universe of infinite objectivity — so far at least 
as human observation can extend — there is unquestionable 
evidence of some one integrating principle, whereby all its 
many and complex parts are correlated with one another in 
such wise that the result is universal order. And if we take 
any part of the whole system — such as that of organic nature 
on this planet to examine in more detail, we find that it appears 
to be instinct with contrivance. 

So to speak, whenever we tap organic nature, it seems to flow with 
purpose; and we shall presently see, upon the monistic theory, 
the evidence of purpose is here in no way attenuated, by a 
full acceptance of any of the mechanical explanations furnished 
by science. 

Now these large 'and important facts of observation unquestionably 
point to some one great integrating principle as pervading the 
Cosmos ; and, if so, we can scarcely be wrong in supposing that 
among all our conceptions, it must be in nearest kinship to that 
which is our highest conception of an integrating cause — viz. 
the conception of psychism. Assuredly no human mind could 
either have devised or maintained the working of even a frag- 
ment of nature; and, therefore, it seems but reasonable to 
conclude that the integrating principle of the whole — the 
spirit, as it were, of the universe, — must be something which, 
while as I have just said holding nearest kinship with our 
highest conception of disposing power, must yet be immeasur- 
ably superior to the psychism of man." (George J. Romanes, 
in "Moniet", vol. 14, page 508.) 

[20] 



DOES NATUEE THINK? 

rational method of Ntaure back to the utmost origin 
of all things. The universe would then be to us an 
open book. 

But as we do not know the ultimate nature of the 
primal component units of the Cosmos, yet do know 
that so far as Nature employs these elements or units 
she does so to the end that the Cosmos may exist, we 
cannot doubt that her processes are plainly rational, 
and, that, therefore Nature ceaselessly thinks in the 
execution of her infinitely complex activities/ 

Thinking, then, can and does go on universally 
throughout Nature without the instrumentality of a 
brain. In fact I think it could be easily shown that 
the brain itself is the result of the process of natural, 
cosmic thinking; that, in short, the human brain is 
the product of thought and thought is not, primarily, 
the product of brain. Thinking began, as we have 
above shown, in Nature long before the brain of man 
or animal originated. 

Contemplate, if you please, all the marvels of Na- 
ture. How infinite, how transcendent were the 
methods which Nature utilized in her glorious 
achievements! How distant and vague is the begin- 

* " whenever in the natural world, what we call phenomenon or an 
event takes place, we either find it resolvable ultimately into 
some change of place, or of movement in material substance, 
or we endeavor to trace it up to some such change; and only 
when successful in such endeavor do we consider that we have 
arrived at its theory. In every such change we recognize the 
action of Force. And, in the only case in which we are admitted 
into any personal knowledge of the origin of the force, we find 
it connected with Volition, and by inevitable consequence with 
intellect, and with all those attributes of mind in which (and 
not in the possession of arms, legs, brains and viscera) person- 
ality consists. Constituted as the human mind is, if Nature be 
not interpretable through these conceptions, it is not interprets- 
ble at all," (Sir John Herschel — see "Monist" vol. XIV, 
p. 507.) 

[21] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

ning of all, and what incomputable ages were required 
for her to reach the present form and grandeur of 
perfection! To enable us the better to realize the 
triumphs of Nature, let us ask ourselves how the 
agriculturist, the horticulturist, the animal breeder, 
etc., were enabled to improve on Nature by generating 
forms of grains and animals and plants and fruits 
superior to her own superb productions? 

The answer is at hand. Man accomplished these 
marvels, indeed, by the use of his brain and mind, 
but these instruments were employed by him merely 
to detect Nature's methods and to turn them back 
upon Nature to teach her how to improve herself. 

Man himself never goes beyond Nature, in dis- 
covering laws, methods, processes, secrets of which 
she is not apparently conscious. Man improves 
Nature merely by stealing from her heart her own 
secrets and then employing them to assist her in the 
accomplishment of more resplendent achievements 
than she unassisted seems capable of. Man discovered 
no original ways to generate the hardier grains in 
pioneer fields, the more perfect rose in gentler climes, 
the speedier and tougher steeds for pleasure and for 
thrift ; he did not superimpose on Nature an invention 
of his own which was contradictory of her methods 
and laws in order to attain his own creative ends. 
All man did was to ferret out Nature's own ways of 
doing things ; then he used his own reason to suggest 
to himself how he could direct Nature to a labor 
that by her own method improved upon herself. 

''Nature is made better by no mean, 

But Nature makes that mean; so over that art 

[22] 



DOES NATURE THINK? 

Which you say adds to Nature, is an art 
That Nature makes." 

Merely by imitating Nature, then, has man improved 
on Nature. 

Are we therefore justified in asserting that man 
exercised the process of thought — a logical method, 
by imitating Nature which resulted so profitably, yet 
deny to that very Nature, which he but imitated, the 
attribute of thought and the logical method he stole 
from her? 

If we are to believe with Haeckel , and the 
mechanistic biologists, that the human brain origin- 
ated in a slight medullary thread, which after count- 
less centuries attained the glory and perfection of 
man's cranial crown, then we can better realize how 
in the work of Nature there was manifest a purposive 
method, even though she had no antecedent pattern 
to follow, or ultimate design to work towards. 

The brain came at last as the utilitarian result of 
a myriad of forces struggling toward a certain end, 
which never paused till the end was achieved, and 
the marvel of the human brain evolved. In this 
sense, then, the process of thought existed in Nature, 
long before the instrumentality of the brain was de- 
veloped in the animal species to act for man in this 
capacity. 

To say, then, that there is no thought in Nature, 
without brain, is manifestly to err. All we can 
rightly say is, that judging by earthly experience 
human thinking without the instrumentality of a 
brain seems impossible. In such a statement, however, 

[23] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

we can refer but to the process of thinking within 
what we know to be the limitations of the human 
brain. But the very question for us to decide is 
whether any psychic activities continue to exist out- 
side the brain after once initiated within it. 

If such psychic activities do continue, then there 
would be a residue of human thinking which would 
continue to operate in an invisible sphere or plane, not 
only outside the brain but also outside human con- 
sciousness. 

Before, therefore, we can positively conclude that 
the destruction of the physiological brain would put a 
total end to human consciousness, or continued psychic 
activity, we must learn what becomes of the thoughts 
which are generated in the brain; whether they are 
coterminous with the brain's existence, or whether 
after the brain dissolves they may still continue on 
independent of its agency. 

Again I wish to emphasize that, of course, we can- 
not deny that all the thinking within the human 
consciousness, or in the plane of physiological uncon- 
sciousness, is accomplished through the cranial in- 
strument, and the nervous system; but if it could be 
shown that thoughts themselves, once emanating from 
the brain, and existing in free ether, still continue as 
actual, invisible forms of psychic activity, would we 
then be justified in denying that they may thence- 
forth impinge upon and aggregate or organize in- 
visible matter, which may be even more sensitively 
responsive to their vibrations than the substance of 
the brain? Until this possibility is met and decided 

[24] 



DOES NATURE THINK? 

we have no right to conclude finally that any con- 
ceivable after existence is impossible, because of the 
destruction of the physiological instrument of 
thought. 

To such a possibility, then let us address ourselves. 



[26] 



CHAPTER V 

Can Thoughts Be Photographed ? 

If we could understand the actual nature of a 
thought it would greatly assist in solving this prob- 
lem. Physiological psychology is leading us away 
from the supposition, once entertained, that thought 
is a mental process free from essential relation to 
matter. We scarcely now subscribe to the definition 
once rendered by Dr. Dwight who said ' ' Thought can- 
not be superadded to matter so as in any sense to 
render it true that matter can become cogitave." 
We know now that thought is correlated with vibra- 
tions in the gray matter of the brain and nerves, 
without which there would be no thinking in the 
human organism. 

It is now thoroughly scientific to speak of thought 
not as something mysterious and super-material, but 
as a motion, or a vibratory process of matter. Such 
an interpretation is frequently denounced as materi- 
alistic; but even so, it has wondrously spiritual or 
refined consequences which behooves us well to 
observe. The alleged materialist, Dr. Ludwig 
Buechner, in his famous work on Force and Matter 
said many years ago, ' ' That thinking must be a mode 
of motion is not only a postulate of logic, but a pro- 
position which has lately been demonstrated experi- 
mentally. ' ' 

Instead of such a definition discouraging even the 

[26] 



CAN THOUGHTS BE PHOTOGRAPHED? 

most spiritually inclined, if properly apprehended, it 
should elate them. For we shall pursue the stern 
logical deduction of this proposition and see where it 
fetches up. 

That thought is now determined to be a mode of 
motion is proven by the very structure of the brain 
and the nervous system. Says Dr. Carr, in a recent 
lecture in London reported in the Athenaeum, "The 
structure of the nervous system leaves no doubt what- 
ever about the function in one important respect 
. . . . It is contrived solely for the transmission 
of movement by the propagation of vibrations." If 
the instrument is so contrived, it is palpable that the 
vibrations are the thought forms that generated the 
structure in response to their functional demands. 
These thought forms or vibrations, of course invisible, 
may be pictured, says Dr. Carr "as a neural process 
occurring very much in the manner of the passage 
of an electric current through a circuit in which there 
are interposed resistances. The resistances .... 
must be something like the glow lamps of an electric 
installation". If thought, then, is a mode of motion, 
or an activation of invisible matter into responsive 
vibrations, it is proper to ask what becomes of the 
vibrations? Do they die within the substance of the 
brain, or dissipate in the action of a muscle they set 
going. The law of the transmutation of energy 
would caution us to look for the continuity of the 
unabsorbed quantum of the vibration in some form 
of motion elsewhere. 

The process of thinking is that of a circuit, or a 
round of movements. First the nerves are affected 

[27] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

by an external stimulus; this stimulus passes in vi- 
brations over the ingoing nerves, awakening in the 
will a responsive movement which descends in vibra- 
tions down the outgoing nerves and ends in some 
muscular action. 

But is that the end of it? Does not the muscular 
action continue in some transmuted form. It cer- 
tainly does. The vibration coming from the brain 
commands the movement of the foot, the foot strikes 
a pebble, the pebble rolls down a hill carrying sand 
and dirt with it, disturbing its surroundings, and then 
falls into a brook, causing the brook to break into a 
myriad of ripples, which themselves transfer motion 
to the air and the shores, causing incomputable vibra- 
tions, which may take a variety of different forms as 
they pass on. 

Thus we are unable to trace the ultimate transmu- 
tation of a mental vibration once it is begun. This 
is physically demonstrable when we consider an ex- 
ternal muscular action. But is not the same law 
applicable when we consider pure thinking? Is it 
not true that our thoughts though unexpressed are 
constantly affecting others with whom we communi- 
cate consciously or unconsciously? We are accus- 
tomed to say a thing is *'in the air". It seems to be 
catching; everybody senses and pursues it. It is a 
spiritual contagion. 

Once more; we are coming to understand that the 
mental vibration, or the thought, operates in a most 
refined and ultimate form of matter. There is rea- 
son to believe that the protoplasm of the nervous sys- 
tem and the brain is surcharged with the energy of 

[28] 



CAN THOUGHTS BE PHOTOGRAPHED? 

electrons that are constantly escaping from the dis- 
solution of its own atoms. Until, then, we are 
thoroughly acquainted with the nature and possibili- 
ties of the radiations from the protoplasm ^ in the 
process of thinking, we are not permitted to reach 
any final determination as to its ultimate history. 

Supposing, for instance it would be demonstrated 
as a fact that a thought could be photographed. In 
that case it would be shown that a thought form has 
actual material substance, even though it may be 
impalpable, imponderable and invisible. Certainly it 
is not possible to photograph nothing; and if it is 
something that is photographed, then that something 
must be substantial. Thought, then, if capable of 
photographic reproduction, must be substantial, 
howbeit invisible. 

But if a thought can be photographed it is an 
entity; the question then for us to solve would be 
the possible continuity of such an entity, after it has 
ceased to be a reality in the brain. If it has cou- 
pon this point I have elsewhere said: "There is, however, a still 
more marvellous differentiation of the living matter, only re- 
cently discovered, which seems to be employed in the human 
being for special, important purpose. All matter is constantly 
emitting a subtle emanation because it is in a state of con- 
stant dissolution. , . . Passing from the physical to the vital 
universe, we learn .... that protoplasm itself is a state of 
matter from which this subtle, corpuscular substance is con- 
tantly emitted, and that the vital cells are always surrounded 
by an atmosphere of this radiant energy. In short not only 
are the cells constantly aging and dying, but the very material 
of which they are composed, is also in a state of ceaseless 
dissolution, with the result that they emit a constant energy, 
or subtle emanation, whose properties are wholly distinguish- 
able from all other known substances. . . . Now the final dis- 
covery which science has recently revealed relative to this 
mysterious substance is that in vital forms this subtle element 
is discerned as constantly playing round the avenues and cen- 
tres of the brain." "In fact it seems to be utilized" in the 
operation of the brain cells, as the immediate instrumentality 
of the will or the volitioi^al energy." ("Psychic Phenomena, 
Science and Immortality." Second Ed. Pages 519 to 521.) 

[29] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

tinuity as an entity, then the issue that would in- 
volve a possible future existence would be the 
problem whether these mental entities are susceptible 
of individual aggregation in a more refined and 
invisible substance than what we know in this plane- 
tary life. Until all these problems are finally deter- 
mined scientifically and experimentally we have no 
right to conclude that we have any final and absolute 
knowledge concerning a potential future existence. 

There have been many alleged successes at thought 
photography. Most of them have been fraudulent 
or unreliable. One or two have attained some scien- 
tific respectability; but have been doubted by the 
great majority of reputable scientists. Recently, 
however, there has been some success recorded in 
France that must give us pause in our persistent 
denials. Dr. Joseph Grasset in his work "The Mar- 
vels Beyond Science," recites that he had seen 
''thought photographs" produced by Commandant 
M. Darget; "A proof dated May 27th 1896," he 
says, "exhibits a bottle which had been obtained by 
M. Darget by thinking intensely of a bottle he had 
been looking at. On June 5th following, he was re- 
quested to get another bottle and this was done in a 
photograph in the presence of six onlookers who 
signed the record, which was inserted in the Bevue 
Scientifique du Spiritisme, in January 1897, to- 
gether with two engravings of the bottle. Another 
proof showing a stick, was obtained by M. Darget 
by thinking of a walking stick he had just been look- 
ing at, in the red light of a dark room. Another 
proof of a thought photograph was obtained by 

[30] 



CAN THOUGHTS BE PHOTOGRAPHED? 

placing for ten minutes a plate over the forehead of 
Mme. Darget when asleep. It showed the image of an 
eagle. ' ' 

Thus far M. Darget had approached scientific recog- 
nition for his strange work, but it remained for an 
exhibition by him before the French Academy of 
Science to give him far more reputable, and almost 
assured, scientific approval. The following despatch 
appeared in the N. Y. Times of Aug. 15th, 1911. As 
there never appeared any denial of the alleged facts 
contained in this despatch it appears to be genuine. 

''Paris, August 11th. Much interest has been 
aroused by announcement of the well known scien- 
tific investigator, Commandant Darget, of the suc- 
cess in photographing human thought. Commandant 
Darget who has devoted a long time to the study of 
hypnotism and kindred subjects, stated yesterday to 
the Academy of Sciences that after many trials he had 
succeeded in obtaining photographic impression of 
thoughts of concrete objects. He produced as evi- 
dence two photographs, one showing a walking stick 
and the other a bottle, in each case the image being 
perfectly distinct. In explanation he gave the fol- 
lowing account of the process: After staring a long 
time on the object to be photographed in a strong red 
light, he fixed his gaze with all the will power at his 
command, on a photographic plate that had previously 
been immersed in a weak developer in a dark room. 
At the end of a quarter of an hour the image of the 
object appeared on the negative. According to the 
Commandant's theory these astounding results are 
due to certain obscure light rays which he calls *V' 
rays. As the Academy is a highly official body of 

[31] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAB 

savants in France, and all Commandant Darget's ex- 
periments were made in the presence of six witnesses, 
it seems difficult to doubt their authenticity." See 
Appendix "B." 

Now, I am not vouching for such authenticity or 
the accuracy of the report. I can myself discern the 
possibility of fraud if ^1. Darget were disposed to 
manipulate it. All I am declaring is that a highly 
capable body of scientific savants seemed to be satis- 
fied that the demonstration of thought photography 
was an accomplished fact ; and until we are able to 
prove such a fact to be an impossibility, we are con- 
fronted with a very serious scientific problem, that 
affects the theorj^ of an after life. For assuming that 
the fact shall be absolutely demonstrated in the near 
future, then you have this issue to settle in the prob- 
lem of a possible future life. You shall have dis- 
covered that thoughts are substantial, insomuch as 
they are susceptible to the impression of the photo- 
graphic plate. If they are substantial they have form 
and a certain fixity; then they must also possess 
some potential continuity of existence. If they have 
an existence, such existence must be external to the 
brain. For the plate photographs only the vibrations 
that impinge it. The camera cannot enter the brain 
and take a picture that is there painted. It can only 
receive the vibrations that impinge upon it, precisely 
as it receives the impingment of vibrations of sun- 
light when it produces the photograph of an external 
physical object. 

Thought-photography, then, once scientifically es- 
tablished, means the demonstration, experimentally, 

[32] 



CAN THOUGHTS BE PHOTOGRAPHED? 

of the existence of post-cranial processes of thinking, 
or actual thoughts external to a human brain. That 
fact once established would lead to the question of 
the continuity and possible perpetuation of such 
external thought-forms in an ultra-material sub* 
stance that might constitute a personal frame for 
future existence. All these problems must be finally 
decided experimentally before any absolute conclu- 
sion can be justly attained respecting the problem 
of an after life. 

The logical deduction following from these prem- 
ises will be fully discussed in the second book of this 
work. Here, however, we are concerned only with 
the negative side of the argument, not with the posi- 
tive, and therefore need not show how the logical 
consequence of the above premises would lead to a 
very convincing demonstration of the possibility of 
an after life. 

All we need say here, by way of hint, is that suc- 
cessful thought photography would tend to demon- 
strate that thoughts incorporate themselves in in- 
visible matter external to the human brain, and as 
such are functionally independent of it. That free 
thoughts, emanating from a personality, whose in- 
tegrating force is its memory, its self-consciousness, 
these thoughts would have a natural affinity, and tend 
to reassemble in a new personality that would con- 
tinue after the old personality had relegated to 
decayed matter. If thoughts are entities is it not 
natural to suppose that the entities which emanate 
from a distinctive personality would have a disposi- 
tion to reassemble in the same memory, by the law of 

[33] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

association, which caused them to be previously as- 
sociated? This is but a hint which I drop here for 
the present to be returned to more elaborately in 
future chapters. 



[34] 



CHAPTER VI 

Has the Soul a Beginning 
and an End? 

Ernst Haeckel says in his **Last Words on Evolu- 
tion", "One important result of these modern dis- 
coveries was the prominence given to the fact that 
the personal soul has a beginning in existence. 
. . . . One cannot see how a thing that thus has 
a beginning can afterwards prove itself immortal.*' 

There is doubtless much force in the contention 
that whatever has a beginning must also have an end- 
ing ; that only that can be indefinitely continuous and 
indestructible which has never originated but has 
always existed. I shall not here animadvert on the 
inability of the human mind to grasp the conception 
of anything existing which has not somewhere orig- 
inated; of conceiving an object existing in time and 
space, whose origin is beyond time and space. If one 
seriously considers the proposition one will discern 
the incapacity of the human mind logically to grasp 
such a conception. The mind cannot think of the 
beginningless any more than it can think of the in- 
finite. Within the compass of human thought all 
existing things, including the universe itself, must 
some time have begun. For the mind cannot grasp 
the notion of nothing ; or the generation of something 
out of nothing. 

If we say matter is eternal and without beginning, 

[35] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

we are merely begging the question and expressing 
onr actual ignorance of what matter really is. It is 
just as metaphysical, and as little scientific, to assert 
the eternity and beginninglessness of matter as to 
assert the same of Deity. In both cases the proposi- 
tion is propounded merely to disguise our ignorance 
of the nature of both Deity and Matter. Man is com- 
pelled to think of everything which he contemplates 
as having had a beginning; even though its begin- 
ning may be beyond the apprehension of the human 
mind. 

Neither can man contemplate and realize the ab- 
solute endlessness of anything, which once existed. 
He can contemplate its infinite continuance, its per- 
petual on-going; but he can do this only by fencing 
off periods of time, and contemplating the existing 
thing as leaping over the fences he holds in imagina- 
tion. In this way man regards his own existence. He 
cannot realize everlasting existence as a quality of 
his own being; he can but conceive himself as con- 
tinuing from day to day or year to year, or any other 
temporary period within his experience. But if he 
tries to think of himself as liviag forever, without 
any time divisions by which to measure the contiQuity 
of his being, he will find the task beyond his powers. 

We cannot possibly know anything about immortal 
existence in the absolute. ALL we can logically postu- 
late or contemplate is an iudefinite or infinite con- 
tinuity of being, going on from epoch to epoch, or we 
might better say, from moment to moment, supported 
by an ineradicable inertia. 

Studied in this light. Dr. HaeckeFs objection will 

[36] 



HAS THE SOUL A BEGINNING AND AN END? 

not, I opine, appear as formidable as it first seemed to 
be. For there are several experiences of man whose 
beginning he discerns, but whose end is, so to speak, 
endless, or continuously ongoing. For instance. 
Motion. We know that we can start a motion, or 
movement, but we also know that nobody can stop it. 
For by the law of the transmutation of energy, when 
any specific motion is intercepted it does not stop, but 
merely transfers its inertia to another phase of en- 
ergy, which, again intercepted, transfers its inertia 
to still another phase of energy and so on indefinitely ; 
the end of motion in the sense of its cessation being 
beyond the discovery or contemplation of man. So 
well known is this law that in our primers of Natural 
Philosophy we read that the kick of a fly moves the 
earth. Of course literally, that is, as far as the eye 
of man can see, the statement is ridiculous. For, ac- 
cording to man^s observation, the kick of a fly can 
scarcely move a thread or slender twig. How then 
can it move the earth? But when the inertia of 
motion, begun by the movement of the fly's leg, is 
transferred to the minute particles that are invisibly 
affected, the motion of the kick goes on forever and 
forever from particle to particle, never ceasing, un- 
less perhaps finally absorbed in the universal sea of 
ether that enswathes the Cosmos. By this example it 
is apparent that it is not always true to say that 
anything once begun cannot go on forever in some 
form of existence. Here there is a beginning with- 
out a conceivable end. 

Again, contemplate the germ-plasm, which Dr. 
Weismann declares is immortal. By this hypothesis, 

[37] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

protoplasm, once having begun its existence on this 
planet, the vital substance, in the form the germ-cell 
from which the living organism evolves, never ex- 
pires, but continues to manifest itself endlessly in 
divergent forms of expression. '^Weismann main- 
tained that the protozoans were distinguished from 
the metazoans, or organisms composed of a number 
of cells, by the curious property they possessed of 
exemption from decay or death. The protozoans ex- 
hibited, in the words of the German savant, an in- 
stance of potential immortality; that is to say, a 
natural physiological death did not exist for th^m; 
if they perished it was by accident or chance, -extra- 
neous to the laws of their organization." (''The Ln- 
mortality of the Infusoria" by Alfred Binet.) 

I am fully aware that the theory has been deuied, 
and especially by Haeckel, with his usual positive 
assertiveness ; but of late it has been demonstrated 
to be experimentally true by many practical biolo- 
gists, and especially demonstrated in the successful 
experiments of Dr. Alexis Carel. So recent and 
authoritative a writer, for instance as Wilson ('*0n 
the Cell and Heredity") says: ''Life is a continuous 
stream. The death of the individual involves no 
breach of continuity in the series of cell divisions by 
which the life of the race flows onward. The individ- 
ual bodv dies, it is true, but the germ cells lives on", 
(p 9) See Appendix "C". 

We have, then, here a vital substance, which, at 
least according to physical science, had a presumptive 
origin on this planet, and yet which never ceases, un- 
der proper conditions, to exist. "The individual or- 
ganism is transient, but the embryonic substance", 
says Binet, "which produces the mortal tissue, pre- 
serves itself, imperishable, everlasting and constant." 

[38] 



HAS THE SOUL A BEGINNING AND AN END? 

Thus we see Haeckel's postulate, as to the innate 
destructibleness of whatever has a beginning in time, 
is erroneous. The germ-plasm, once begun to exist on 
this planet cannot be destroyed, if favorable con- 
ditions prevail, so long as the planet itself exists. 

Nevertheless, here again we meet with a diflSculty. 
When we contemplate the notion of immortality, it 
is of such vast proportions, that, as I have already 
declared, we cannot intelligently comprehend or even 
contemplate it. We cannot possibly conceive of an 
end of anything, any more than we can conceive of 
its absolute beginning. All we can possibly realize, 
mentally, is that of a beginning so far remote that it 
is beyond the apprehension of thought, and of an 
end, so far distant, it is lost in the vista of an infin- 
itely extending existence. Logically we can postulate 
a beginning and an end ; actually we can never realize 
it in thought. 

When we say, then, that the germ-plasm is poten- 
tially immortal, within the compass of the planet's 
history, we will of course at once be confronted with 
the objection, that the planet itself is not even 
potentially immortal, but is itself susceptible to ul- 
timate decay and death. Professor Ostwald regards 
this objection serious enough to interpose it as valid 
against the possibility of human immortal existence. 
He says in his IngersoU Foundation lecture on '^ Im- 
mortality": *'We can conceive of a universal 
catastrophe which would annihilate all the descend- 
ants of the first cell or cells. This conception destroys 
the possibility of calling this sort of existence im- 
mortality, since the idea of immortality iincludes not 

[39] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

only an unlimited possibility for continuance of life, 
but also the absolute impossibility of destroying it." 

This objection appears very serious at first view; 
but let us study it for a moment. 

To begin with, Weismann was not, of course, con- 
tending for more than planetary immortality for his 
protozoans or germ cells. So long as the planet con- 
tinued to exist they also might potentially continue. 
Immortality here contemplated is of the nature 
already discussed. Nothing, for us, is immortal in 
the absolute sense. We can conceive of immortality 
as infinite or indefinite continuity of existence, only. 
Therefore, the protozoans may justly be said to live 
immortally within the co-terminous immortality of 
the planet itself. We are not yet positively assured 
that the planet will die. Such a fate is, at best, but 
a temporary scientific conjecture. At one time it was 
generally supposed that the entire heat of this planet 
was dependent on the emission and absorption of the 
sun's rays. Hence, as the sun's radiation gradually 
ceased the result would be vitally felt in the condition 
of our planet. When no more heat from the sun 
was procurable, the fate of the earth would be sealed 
and it would perish. But more recent discoveries 
have materially qualified this once almost universal 
scientific postulate. 



[40] 



CHAPTER VII 

Can the Universe Be Annihilated? 

It has been found that the earth is not wholly 
dependent on the sun's radiation for its heat and 
existence ; radium has been discovered widely diffused 
throughout the earth; and, it is now shown that the 
emission of radio-active energy affords such indefin- 
ite quantities of heat for the earth that it might con- 
tinue to survive after the supposed exhaustion of the 
sun's radiant energy. Says Soddy (''Matter and 
Energy", p 236) ''The day has gone by when the 
earth is regarded as simply a cooling world. It has 
in its known material constituents a steady source of 
fresh heat, which will last not for one million, but 
for thousands or tens of thousands of millions of 
years. ' ' 

And it is still further conceivable, that we may 
yet discover more heat-emitting energies, from con- 
ceivably yet undiscovered elements within the earth's 
composition. It is but a few years ago since we were 
totally ignorant of the existence of radium and the 
marvellous form of energy it emits. Much more 
were we ignorant of the almost universal existence 
of the radio-active energy which so generally per- 
vades the earth and almost all phases of matter. Who 
shall deny that there may yet exist even more power- 
ful re-vivifying energies within the planet's material 
which may assure it an immortality even beyond 

[41] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

Soddy's tens of thousands of millions of years? 
And in that event the hypothesis of the necessary 
destruction of the primal cells of life and their de- 
scendants within a conceivable planetary cataclysm 
would, of course, be undemonstrable. 

This objection of Ostwald is palpably based on a 
merely vague and unsupported scientific guess; — 
and, yet, for argument's sake, we might admit Ost- 
wald 's conceivable possibility; a total planetary de- 
struction which would involve the destruction of the 
protozoic forms of life, and the original protoplasmic 
germ; nevertheless, would even that admission prove 
effective against a conceivable continuity of proto- 
plasmic and cellular life? He says we can conceive 
of the utter destruction of the primary cells of the 
plasmic germ; so that all life would be absolutely 
destroyed on this planet. Naturally we can conceive 
of such a catastrophe; the only question is whether 
our conception is scientifically justified. When we 
contemplate ^'ultimates'' and ** absolutes", we get 
into deep water and sometimes find ourselves unhap- 
pily floundering. 

What is "absolute destruction and utter annihila- 
tion ? " Is there any such thing in Nature with which 
human knowledge is acquainted? If the cataclysm 
Ostwald propounds as conceivable were really pos- 
sible, it would involve the utter destruction of mat- 
ter itself, which, by scientific hypothesis, is an im- 
possibility. If every form of life were destroyed 
upon this planet, would there not still survive the 
very source, or fountain head of life, from which life 
on this planet came? If life were once generated 

[42] 



CAN THE UNIVERSE BE ANNIHILATED? 

on the earth, would not the primal substance or the 
elements from which the life-germ was evolved, still 
remain; and would not the natural forces inherent 
in this substance or these elements, exercise the power 
of co-ordination and organization that would issue in 
the generation of life upon the earth? Necessarily 
we must admit that this would follow, unless we con- 
cede that the planet itself might be totally demolished. 
So long as the elements out of which the life-germ 
was once constructed continue to exist on the earth, 
it cannot be said that potential life-substance, or 
protoplasm, is absolutely annihilated. 

But the objection might be carried to a more peril- 
ous verge. It might be contended that the same ex- 
pression of life could not be reconstructed, once the 
universal destruction of all forms of life took place. 
This is true ; precisely as it is true that the rose that 
rises from the seed (which contains the living remains 
of a rose that has expired) is not the same rose as 
the one that has gone. And yet in a sense it is the 
same: It contains the complete formative and vital 
principle of the expired rose; it is the same in the 
sense of being so much like the expired rose, so much 
its replica, that we regard it as one of the same family 
and species, which can always be thus contra- 
distinguished from any and all other species of roses 
in the world. In the same manner, though the entire 
world of life went down in a universal holocaust, the 
scattered relics, the dissipated elements, of the life 
forms would, indeed, return to the ether from which 
they came, but would retain the same propulsive 
energy as the original forms and this would urge them 

[43] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

to the re-production of the original unions and rela- 
tions that were once established in previous expres- 
sions of life. 

The principle of life would still inhere, and always 
will, in the elements that enter into the expression of 
life-forms even though dissipated into the ether; the 
power inhering in them would again exercise itself 
in reproducing life forms out of the primal ethereal 
elements; for there must be this tendency in these 
elements else there never had been any organic life 
generated on the planet. ^ 

However, the objection of Ostwald is so fundamen- 
tal and far-reaching it may be said to graze the out- 
most zones of Nature and challenge her utmost pos- 
sibilities. For within the contemplation of his ob- 
jection the planet itself might be utterly destroyed, 
as other planets have been; and in that event his 

^"If a mental picture be conjured up of a world in which there 
is as yet no life, but where conditions are suitable for life to 
appear, it is evident that spontaneous production of such a thing 
as even a bacterium or ether unicellular organism, would by no 
means solve the problem, the new born cell would have no 
organic pabulum and would perish. The production of anything 
so complex as chlorophyll at such a stage is unthinkable to 
any one acquainted with the subtle continuity of all nature. 
In such a world inorganic colloids must first develop, and in 
time one of these must begin to evolve, not a living cell, not 
anything so complex as a micro-coccus, or a bacillus, not even 
a complex protein, carbohydrate, or fat, but some ciuite simple 
form of organic molecule, holding a higher store of chemical 
energy, than the simple inorganic bodies from which it was 
formed. To carry out such a function the inorganic colloid 
must possess the property of transforming sunlight, or some 
other form of radiant energy, into chemical energy. 

Later, such simple organic compounds, by the agency of the same 
or some other colloid, and with a supply of external energy, 
would begin to condense, and form more complex organic mole- 
cules, and finally complexes of inorganic and organic matter 
would come into existence as crystallo-colloids. In this way 
without any hiatus life would be led up to, and inaugurated." 
(Moore's "Origin of Nature and Life," pp. 182, 3.) (Boldface 
type by the author.) 

And again: "If all intelligent creatures were by some holocaust 
destroyed, up out of the depths in process of millions of years 
intelligent beings would once more emerge." (Page 191 idem.) 

[44] 



CAN THE UNIVERSE BE ANNIHILATED? 

objection would naturally raise the question, What 
would become of the immortality, real or potential, 
of the living forms that had expired in the universal 
catastrophe ? 

The palpable answer is that Nature knows no such 
thing as absolute and complete annihilation. It does 
not lie within the range of possibility that this planet 
or the universe can be reduced to nothingness ; for the 
reason that there is no such thing as nothingness in 
Nature. If there were then the Cosmos would be 
generated from nothing; which is a scientific ab- 
surdity. 

There is no destruction in Nature of pure essence; 
she admits only the destruction of forms. Her phe- 
nomena are susceptible to ever-recurring dissipation; 
but the substance of which her phenomena are the 
manifestation, is itself indestructible and everlasting. 
If not, then we repeat, matter would be susceptible to 
final annihilation, and this is not a permissable 
scientific postulate. If, then, the planet itself were 
destroyed and its organized units dissipated, it would 
merely mean that the relationship established between 
the primal units to organize electrons and atoms and 
elements and molecules had been disrupted, but that 
the electrons themselves, which are the primitive 
building stones of the universe, would continue on 
undissipated and intact. Upon this interesting issue 
Professor Garrett P. Serviss, in one of his popular 
articles, has well said : 

''When the extraordinary properties of radium 
were discovered and the suggestion was put forth 
that radium in the sun might indefinitely prolong 

[45] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

the activity of that great body, the idea immediately 
sprang into immense popularity, and was welcomed 
in the same way that a new proof of human immor- 
tality would be." "The sun is not going to die,'* 
people said. "The astronomers are wrong about it. 
Radium will keep it going forever; and if the sun 
lives, so will the earth. '* 

"Unhappily this very thing, radium, or the prop- 
erty of atomic disintegration (going to pieces), 
which radium conspicuously possesses, furnishes 
fresh evidence of the correctness of the astronomical 
judgment that the sun is mortal. It is true that the 
presence of a sufficient quantity of radium in the 
sun might possibly increase the length of time during 
which the sun will continue to be a sun from the 
twelve million years calculated by Lord Kelvin to 
six thousand million years. But that is not immor- 
tality. . . .'* 

This, of course, is true; and as I shall show in a 
later portion of this treatise, when we speak of im- 
mortality in the sense of endless or infinite dura- 
tion, we are attempting the contemplation of a con- 
dition which it is impossible for the mind to realize. 
All we can mentally conceive is an indefinite con- 
tinuity of existence ; but of endless continuity we can 
scarcely realize the meaning. All, apparently, that 
science can detect in nature or that can really be in- 
telligently conceived in spiritual life is an after life 
of uncertain duration; yet we can contemplate the 
possibility of the spiritual and mental elements that 
make up the personality of an individual, after their 
dissolution, being again re-organized and re-united in 
another personality that may be identical with the 
one that has expired and dissolved. For we detect 
that very fact in Nature. The suns and worlds, as 

[46] 



CAN THE UNIVERSE BE ANNIHILATED? 

such indeed, may expire after trillions of millions 
of years of static existence; but though those suns 
and worlds expire, the substance of which they are 
composed does not absolutely perish, for there is no 
such thing in Nature as absolute annihilation. I have 
elsewhere emphasized this point in this treatise and 
I find Serviss Likewise asserting it with emphasis. 
He has, indeed, stated this scientific fact with such 
eloquence and precision that I take the liberty of 
quoting him in detail: 

"As the great French preacher, Bossuet, pointed 
out in one of his tremendous funeral orations, nothing 
that comes to an end, no matter how much it may be 
prolonged, is anything at all when measured by 
eternity. It is in the end that the tragedy consists. 

"Now, the great lesson that radium teaches is the 
perishableness of all things, with the single exception 
of that to which the word "thing" hardly applies — 
energy. Energy flits and flutters, like an intangible 
butterfly, and cannot be permanently imprisoned or 
destroyed. What we call a thing, or matter, appears 
to be only a momentary manifestation of energy. 
Every substance is made up of atoms, but atoms, as 
radium has helped us to discover, are not the in- 
destructible existences they were formerly supposed 
to be, but are merely aggregates of electric energy 
which may, and do, dissolve like morning clouds. 

The life of the atom being limited — although it is 
very, very long — the life of everything made up of 
atoms must necessarily be limited also. When the 
scientist stumbled upon the phenomenon of radio- 
activity, less than twenty years ago, he was like Adam 
beholding for the first time a dying man. What he 
had believed to be immortal turned out to be mortal. 
The atom appeared, of its accord, as a witness 

[47] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

against its supposed eternity. For centuries the old 
alchemists had been smiled at as crazy, though fas- 
cinating mystics, whose Hves were passed in a waking 
dream. But now the atoms of one substance were seen 
in scientific laboratories, changing into the atoms of 
another substance, so that one assumption of the al- 
chemists was proven to be true, viz., that if you can 
get down to the final elements of matter you may be 
able to handle them like building blocks, tearing down 
one edifice and constructing out of its bricks an en- 
tirely different one. 

The bricks are not the atoms, as had been sup- 
posed, but the electrons, of which the atomjs are made 
up. And the electrons are not matter but energy! 
This apparent reasoning in a circle brings us around 
to the conclusion that, fundamentally there is noth- 
ing in the universe, but energy; that everything we 
see and touch, including ourselves, is simply a phase 
or form, of energy, while in regard to energy itself 
about all that we can say is that it is that power 
which does and makes things. 

It has not yet been experimentally proved, but it 
is possible, and even probable, that the same property 
of self-dissolution which makes radium and its asso- 
ciated substances so wonderful, belongs in a less 
conspicuous degree to every kind of matter. Every- 
thing is slowly disintegrating. The earth itself is 
radioactive, and its atoms are dissolving into invisible 
forms of energy. A rock, a mountain, the great globe 
itself, according to this view is no more eternal than 
a puff of vapor. Mont Blanc is, in its nature, as 
evanescent as the red cloud that bums over its head 
in the light of sunset. 

The starrj^ universe is like a shower of glittering 
sparks struck off from a blacksmith's anvil. The 
constellations that seem to us to glow with unending 
splendor will be lost in the blackuess of space, only 
tj be replaced by another burst of sparks when the 

[48] 



CAN THE UNIVERSE BE ANNIHILATED? 

hammer falls again. The suns radiate away their 
heat and light and become dead stars; the atoms of 
the dead stars dissolve into electrons, which reshape 
themselves into new atoms and so the circle of change 
begins again. 

One of the most astonishing discoveries of astron- 
omical photography is the existence of black nebulae. 
Associated with some of these black nebulae are 
luminous nebulae. Many of the luminous nebulae 
have set themselves into fiery maelstroms, out of 
which emerge flights of newborn stars. It is not the 
things that it creates, but it is creation itself which 
is eternal." 

However, would it not be true, that in such a 
cataclysmic event, though all forms of matter and 
interrelated elements were dissipated, not only would 
the atoms, or at least the electrons, still continue in- 
tact, but would they not be impelled in their con- 
tinued existence to the repetition of their former 
relations and unions by the force of inherent or in- 
herited memory? Where does memory begin and 
where does it end? We have it on the authority of 
certain scientists that memory begins in the first cor- 
relation established between the chemical elements. 
Biologists are now insisting that memory *'is the 
general property of organized matter" (E. Hering) 
and that it runs down unconsciously even to the cel- 
lular units of life forms. 

Haeckel, even, insists that the 4000 species of Radi- 
olaria which he discovered owe their marvellous 
variety and specific constancy to the ineradicable 
memory of the cells composing and diversifying them. 
He also insists that there must be a sort of initial 
feeling or sensitiveness among the chemical atoms 

[49] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

that unite in molecules of matter, and this deter- 
mines, of course, a mnemonic disposition among them. 
That is, wherever we find associated atoms or forms 
of organic matter, there we discern a disposition to 
associate because of the force of memory inhering in 
them. If memory, then is a conscious or unconscious 
state of living matter, and a recurring disposition in 
inorganic matter, logically, the primal electrons that 
combine to form primary atoms must be impelled by 
a like power. Once grant that memory is an in- 
eradicable capacity or disposition among primitive 
electrons and atoms, then they may be scattered 
through the ether and still they will be disposed to 
re-unite as they formerly did, in spite of all the 
opposition that may be experienced. If that is a 
fact, then it follows that the life-forms to which these 
primary electrons give expression in earth-creations, 
would be re-expressed even though their original or- 
ganization were apparently destroyed or annihilated. 
Hence the objection of Ostwald that planetary de- 
struction would also absolutely destroy the primal 
germ cells and their descendants, and thus over- 
throw the possibility of immortality of life on earth, 
falls to the ground on careful examination. Naturally 
the same life-forms would not re-exist, but the inertia 
or memory of pre-existing associations would tend to 
re-unite them in duplicate forms of past relationship. 



[50] 



CHAPTER VIII 

Do Primitive Life-Forms Prophesy 
Soul Death? 

A still further objection to the fact of immortality 
of the unicellular forms of life, as contended for by 
Weismann, is advanced by Haeckel, and is quite 
popularly endorsed. Referring to the fact that 
primitive forms of life propagate not by conjugation 
but by fission, or cell-division, he says that even 
though the separated parts are identically the same 
and carry forward the deathless germ plasm, yet 
the original individual is destroyed. Hence he con- 
tends, that even the discovered potential immortality 
of protozoans, if admitted to be true, does not demon- 
strate or suggest the possibility of individual im- 
mortality. 

Like the other arguments we have been considering, 
it seems quite formidable until we carefully analyze 
it. Haeckel is here willing, for the sake of argument, 
to admit what he had frequently denied, namely 
that Weismann 's theory of the immortality of the 
germ plasm may be true ; but even if true it cannot be 
dragged in as an illustrative demonstration of in- 
dividual immortality, he asserts, because, though the 
undifferentiated germ plasm may be immortal, when 
it evolves into cell-life, and procreates daughter cells 
by the division of itself, the individuality of the 
original cell disappears. That is, there may be im- 

[51] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

mortality of the life substance, but there is no im- 
mortality of the individual cell-life. 

Now is this true? Is it a fact that when the pro- 
tozoan (the unicellular life-form) propagates by 
fission that it thereby loses its own individuality? 
On first thought it seems to; but on profounder 
analysis it will be seen that the apparent loss of the 
individual is a delusion. What actually occurs in 
cell-division? Simply this: the cell divides into two 
equal parts; the nucleus divides equally with the 
cytoplasm of the cell. The nucleated cell that thus 
divides carries off, it is true, only one half the sub- 
stance of the original cell. But the other half still 
remains with the mother cell. 

Now by what fact in biology or logic, is Dr. 
Haeckel justified in declaring that the reduced 
mother cell, which thus remains, is not still the 
identical individual that it was originally? Cer- 
tainly the reduction in size or quantity cannot jus- 
tify such an assertion. Does not the remaining 
mother cell retain the full capacity to grow and de- 
velop to maturity, so that it may again throw off 
another daughter cell? In what particular has the 
original cell, though reduced in size after reproduc- 
tion, lost its qualitative individuality? 

We shall at once see the error of this contention 
by contemplating for a moment the generation of a 
chicken. The chicken grows from the chick and 
the chick from the egg. Certainly if we judge these 
different forms of life quantitatively we shall be 
forced to declare that they are not at aU equal, and 
that judged by appearance they are not the same 

[52] 



LIFE-FORMS PROPHESY SOUL DEATH 

individual. At every state of its growth from egg to 
hen, the chicken might be said, by Haeckel's hypo- 
thesis, to have lost its individuality. But we know 
that such an assertion would be false. The egg that 
generates a chick is headed straight on either to be- 
come a cock or a hen. The cock egg, can by no hocus 
pocus, become the full developed hen and the hen-egg 
can by no possibility become the cock. The individ- 
uality of the egg persists in spite of the increase of 
quantity and the complete transformation of its 
appearance. The same egg continues throughout the 
whole process, merely deceiving us by taking on more 
and more substance which causes its morphological 
appearance to change. All the way through its de- 
velopment the integrity of the individual is pre- 
served, notwithstanding the exceedingly great quan- 
titative differences that manifest themselves in the 
process of growth. 

Now precisely, in a contrary direction, the same 
condition prevails in the life history of the unicell 
or protozoan. All that occurs in the process of fission 
is the throwing off a part of the substance of the 
protozoan. But all the elements which are necessary 
to the maintenance and integrity of its individuality 
remain with the mother cell, or the original protozoan. 

One might as well argue that a metazoic, or many- 
celled, form of life loses its individuality in the pro- 
cess of procreation, because it emits a certain amount 
of its substance in the process. Let me ask, why, if 
in copulation, the metazoan cannot be said to lose its 
individuality because of the permanent loss of a vital 
portion of itself, are we justified in declaring that 

[53] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

the protozoan loses its individuality in departing 
with a portion of its vital substance? 

Manifestly the delusion has misled us, because the 
protozoan loses such a disproportionate amount of its 
substance in comparison with the loss of the metazoan, 
in the act of reproduction. The delusion occurs be- 
cause of this fact: In the process of fission, or cell 
division, it looks as though two new cells resulted; 
each with its distinct and original individuality. 
Thus, apparently the original cell has been destroyed, 
and its individuality appears to be a myth. 

But in point of fact what actually takes place? 
Has there really been any new cell at all generated? 
No. What occurs is merely the dividing in two of a 
single cell, one of the divided parts of which must 
necessarily be the original cell (that is, what is left 
of it) while the other divided part wanders away. 
The fact that the remaining portion of the original 
cell (the mother portion) retains all the qualitative 
elements of that cell, namely, that it can again grow 
to full maturity and successfully perform the act of 
fission, shows that nothing of the essential nature of 
the mother-cell's individuality has been abrogated. 
The daughter cell has carried away nothing of the 
mother cell essential to its original integrity; it has 
sloughed off a part of its substance, but in all other 
respects has left the mother cell intact and complete. 
Does the removal of a portion of the substance of a 
living body destroy the individuality of that body? 
Certainly not. 

Shall we say, for instance, that when human beings 
copulate and thus bring forth a new individual the 

[54] 



LIFE-FORMS PEOPHESY SOUL DEATH 

individuality of the parents is thus destroyed? The 
parents give up a certain vital portion of the sub- 
stance of their bodies (a portion of that substance, 
indeed, which contains all that is vital to their exis- 
tence). Yet because of the surrender of this sub- 
stance shall we say that their individuality has been 
disintegrated? That would of course be absurd. 
Then why is it not equally absurd to assert that when 
a protozoan, or a mother cell, divides itself into two 
vital parts, each of which is fully capacitated for all 
the purposes of the cell life, that thereby the organ- 
ization of the original portion of the protozoan has 
lost its individual existence? The mother-cell remains 
just as individual as it ever was, all its parts and 
capacities in full possession, as though it had not 
parted with a daughter cell. Is it not then as com- 
pletely itself as it was before it divided off the 
daughter cell? In this argument Haeckel, and all 
who have followed him, seem to have stumbled on a 
mare^s nest. And it seems, indeed, quite odd that a 
mind, as keen and comprehensively informed, espe- 
cially in the mysteries of biology as is Haeckers, 
should have fallen into such a curious error. It is 
evidently the result of blind opposition to the pos- 
sibility of a future life for man. 



[56] 



CHAPTER IX 

Why Is Disbelief in After Life 
Increasing? 

Another argument sometimes advanced with ap- 
parent cogency is that because, after centuries of dis- 
pute and investigation, the number of believers in a 
future life has grown steadily less among educated 
people, therefore the conclusion of a belief in an 
after life would seem to have no scientific verifica- 
tion. 

A moment's thought will remind us that the rea- 
son why there has been a material falling off in the 
number of educated believers in an after life, is that 
the foundation of such belief in past centuries has 
been purely metaphysical and presumptive, and late 
discoveries and investigations of Nature have dis- 
proven the natural foundations of such faith. When 
people have placed their trust in a belief which 
seemed to be verifiable and consonant with natural 
fact, and have afterwards discovered that the very 
foundation on which they rested their faith is de- 
stroyed, they become discouraged and fly to the op- 
posite belief, without further troubling themselves. 
A sense of disgust seizes them and they cease to be 
interested. That is really the present status of the 
free, educated mind today. ^ 

iFrom Leuba's "Belief in God and Immortality:" 
•'A few years ago I began an attempt to determine scientifically the 
presence in particular classes of persons of the belief in God 

[56] 



DISBELIEF IN AFTER LIFE INCREASING 

A brief consideration of some of tliese arguments 
will demonstrate why there are so many people who 
have grown indifferent to the probability of an after 
life because of their disappointment. 

In former ages the theological inoculation was al- 
most universal and everybody believed in an after 
life, not because they had investigated the idea, but 
because people had been enjoined to believe it at the 
peril of their souls. 

The fact that Christ had risen from the grave ac- 
cording to the scriptural narrative was sufficient 
evidence that there is a future life for all, as so elo- 
quently maintained by St. Paul. 

When, however, as the result of the Higher Criti- 
cism, the foundations of this belief began to fall by 
cutting away the infallibility and authenticity of 
the Scriptures, naturally a disbelief in immortality 
immediately followed. Therefore, many millions of 
people who formerly innocently accepted the doctrine 

and immortality. . . . The groups chosen were American stu- 
dents, scientists, historians, sociologists, psychologists and phil- 
osophers. The choice of groups was determined chiefly by the 
fact that these men because of their intelligence, habits of 
reflection and knowledge may be regarded as in the vanguard 
of progress; their opinions reflect probably the public opinion 
of tomorrow, 

.... We have seen that in Christian countries immortality has 
been far from being a universal object of belief. Very little 
more than half the students .... ascribed to the belief in 
immortality a serious practical importance. Among the lesser 
scientists of the second division 21.5 per cent announced the 
absence of a desire and 87.7 per cent a moderate desire, while 
among the greater men as many as 25 per cent disclaimed any 
desire for immortality and 39.1 per cent more affirmed a mod- 
erate desire. These figures will no doubt cause surprise, for it 
is, I think, generally thought disbelievers yearn for it." 

While Dr. Leuba's keen and thorough researches are interesting 
and convincing, they bear little on the study we are pursuing 
in this thesis. For whether or not intellectual persons are now 
tiring of the doctrine or are utterly averse to it, has nothing 
whatever to do with the question whether or no Nature her- 
self presents any fact? and laws that would seem to warrant 
at least a logical deduction in support of the belief. 

[57] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAB 

or Scriptural inculcation, having learned to distrust 
the sacred writings, have likewise learned to distrust 
the doctrine of the after life and have grown indiffer- 
ent to it. ^^1^ 

But as the theological groundwork of belief in 
immortality based on alleged Revelation began to 
crumble, other arguments, philosophical, ethical, etc., 
were invented and temporarily accepted by many as 
rational solaces for a defeated faith. 

There is, for instance, the so-called juridical ar- 
gument. This purports to assert that because of the 
palpable state of injustice which universally prevails 
in human life and earthly conditions, the instinctive 
sense of justice in the heart of man must look to 
another and more hopeful plane of existence for its 
joyous realization. 

Because the wicked prosper here, and the good so 
often fail, because "sorrow's crown of sorrows" 
weighs so heavily on the brow of man in this mortal 
state, it must needs be that there will come a future 
epoch in his existence where reverse conditions shall 
prevail, and bliss will supplant woe, where earthly in- 
eptitudes shall be corrected. 

This once great argument of Butler and Kant ap- 
pealed to many minds in periods perhaps less cul- 
tured and thoughtful than our own, but there are 
plenty of thinking persons today who reject the ar- 
gument as fallacious and absurd. 

For, by what right are we permitted to assume that 
the state of man was intended for perfection and 
that in want of such perfection here he shall be per- 
mitted to enjoy it elsewhere? 

[58] 



DISBELIEF IN AFTER LIFE INCREASING 

How do we know that the universe contemplates 
justice and that all human beings must some time 
have it meted out to them? 

Are we able to prove that the distribution of jus- 
tice among human beings is any more a part of Na- 
ture than its distribution among the lower animals, 
or even among plants and flowers? We certainly 
know that in those realms the element of justice does 
not seem to have been endowed by Nature ; and we are 
not justified in assuming that it is a natural element 
among men. 

Rather, we should apprehend the fact that the 
sense of justice is a qualification which has been 
evolved in human consciousness from man 's planetary 
experience ; and therefore we have no right to assume 
that it is an element meant only to be ideally realized 
in a more accommodating plane of existence. 

Such manner of reasoning has divorced many 
thinking beings from the Kantian and Butlerian logic, 
who have therefore suffered the loss of faith in im- 
mortality on such philosophical grounds. The ethical 
argument is somewhat akin to the preceding. 

It is declared that man's life here is so incom- 
plete and unsatisfactory, because of the fact that he 
can conceive ideals, and possibilties of his powers, 
which are not permitted to attain fulfillment here 
and that, consequently, some other plane of existence 
must await him where the realization of these dreams 
may be achieved. 

When we contemplate how many noble minds have 
climbed to the very gates of their ambition only to 
see them closed against them; when we think of the 

[59] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

inventors, the philosophers, the statesmen, the ar- 
tists, the writers, the painters, etc., all of whom have 
but begun to discern the faintest glimpse of their 
desire to benefit the race, and who have gone down 
into the dark pit in the full possession of aU their 
powers, it is argued, it cannot but be that they must 
elsewhere be suffered to realize their noble aims and 
bless a race invisible to our eyes beyond the stars. 

Here again we assume a purpose of life, inculcated 
by Nature, of which we have not the slightest proof 
or evidence. 

Why is not the end of each life attained in its in- 
dividual achievement even though it can discern 
possibilties still unattained? 

Is it not as palpably logical and ethical to assume 
that each individual gives to life and to mankind aU 
he achieves in deeds, and then leaves it also his resi- 
due of ideas, dreams and ideals, as a heritage by which 
the race may benefit and advance, and that thus his 
end is fulfilled, even though he be not a personal 
factor therein after his departure from earth? 

Man leaves his deeds and thoughts behind, and 
these become messengers and instruments that con- 
tinue his career after the dissolution of his flesh. 

The im -mortality of character is a convincing and 
unassailable fact; how do we know that Nature pur- 
ports to render in each life more than the heritage 
of character for the race : and though the individual 
disappears yet the character lives on, in influence, in 
deeds, in the fruit of brain and brawn? 

Can we prove that more was intended by Natu2*e? 
Then if not why insist that the individual life must 

[60] 



DISBELIEF IN AFTEB LIFE INCREASING 

somewhere Live out its future existence to satisfy the 
ends and cravings of its nature? 

Such is the reasoning that has blighted the belief 
in immortality among many who had placed their 
confidence in the doctrine on the ethical conceptions 
and demands of philosophy. 

Again, there is strength of appeal in the argument 
from the affections, that play so large a role in the 
drama of human life. Can it be, says the defender 
of faith, that these noble relations are established here 
on earth, the fruits of love, the bonds of union, the 
tender ties that bind together hearts and souls so 
firmly, only to be snapped forever by the sudden 
stroke of death? 

Shall a mother's tears forever flow unsolaced by 
the hope of certain reunion with the child so rudely 
torn from her breast ? Shall the husband never more 
look upon the glorified visage of the embodiment of 
love's ideal, whom he called his wife, and whom 
Death tore from him almost before he realized the 
depth and profundity of his affection ? 

Shall the orphaned child forever mourn its lost 
parents and not again behold their countenances 
ravished with joy in the embrace of paradisial re- 
union? 

Such is the appeal ad hominem which for many 
centuries strengthened man's hope in the after lifej 
else were God a demon to suffer love to prevail here 
for a brief moment only to be followed by years of 
separation and suffering. 

But because many now study human life as a 
natural and not a supernatural phenomenon, the force 

[61] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

of this appeal has considerably weakened, with a 
consequential fading of the once strong faith in a 
future existence. 

Nature may be charged with permitting, under her 
laws, the development and emphasis of love in the 
human heart, and Nature may be regarded cruel and 
demonic in allowing the dire consequences above in- 
dicated. 

But the charge cannot be laid at the feet of any 
God. God does not put love in the human heart: 
it has not always been there but has evolved by slow 
stages from crude elements in the savage breast to 
the most refined idealism of romantic affection preval- 
ent in modern civilization. 

Moreover, man himself speedily kills love, even with 
slight provocation. The history of the race is the 
slaughter of love and mutual affection for the selfish 
gratification of the ambitious and intriguing. 

If love can be so complacently slain for man's 
gratification, when necessity demands, why should 
man complain if Nature ruthlessly severs the tie for- 
ever? 

Men's loves and affections change here upon this 
plane, how often; children learn to forget and 
even hate parents, and parents children; husbands 
slough off wives and wives forsake husbands, for bet- 
ter and for worse; devotion almost as often turns to 
rebellion, as it lives in fruition. 

Why then expect an after life to repair the sun- 
dered ties of human affection, when the natural evo- 
lution of love on this planet proves that love is a 
variable and not a constant quantity ? 

[62] 



DISBELIEF IN AFTER LIFE INCREASING 

By what law' of analogy or logic are we empowered 
to assume that an after life can change the processes 
of Nature and transform the human heart into one of 
permanent loyalty in love and devotion, which has 
here evinced its utter failure in such endeavor? 

Is it not more rational to assume that Love works 
out its own ends in this life by implanting in the 
human breast a prompting to unity and humanity, 
which makes for the betterment of the race by the 
gradual perfection of a prophetic civilization? 

Such is the reasoning which has compelled many 
minds to refuse the logic of appeal from the human 
affections that seemed to demand the existence of an 
after life for the restoration of sundered affections 
in this life. Hence many have fallen away from 
the faith. 

Once more, if we return to some of the metaphysical 
arguments once in vogue and which strongly im- 
pressed the minds of men, we shall see that in the 
light of modern culture they too have failed. 

Leibnitz's argument, once so potent and convincing, 
utterly fails today under the search-light of science. 

He argued that the soul by its nature was a sim- 
ple monad, utterly indestructible and indivisible; 
whereas the body consisted of a community of simple 
monads j in death the bodily monads separated, while 
the simple monad of the soul was freed, and flew 
away to other realms. 

In the plane of the imagination such a conception 
is both poetic and convincing; but in science it has 
no validity whatever. 

The very notion of a monad is purely ideal and 

[63] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

imaginary; susceptible of no possible empirical dem- 
onstration. The modern scientific atom or electron 
though once imaginary is now physically proven to 
exist; but the metaphysical monad is beyond all dis- 
covery or demonstration. What the soul is as an 
abstract entity no one knows or can safely guess. 
Therefore to place one's faith in the after life on 
such a hypothesis is depending on a mere rope of 
sand which the first breath of logic will dissipate. 

Thousands, however, even among the intellectually 
elite, once believed and accredited it, who now rele- 
gate it to the limbo of fancy, and thus refuse to accept 
a doctrine of future existence which rests on such 
flimsy proof. 

It is safe to say that the great majority of cultured 
people who have given thought to the subject have 
today cast aside all the one time effective metaphysical 
and theological arguments that once sustained popu- 
lar faith in immortality. Even when they are so 
cleverly stated as by the late Prof. Royce, their flaws 
are not undiscoverable. 

''Just because God is One," says Royce "all our 
lives have various and unique places in the harmony 
of the divine life. And just because God attains and 
wins and finds this uniqueness, all our lives win in 
our union with Him the individuality, which is es- 
sential to their true meaning. 

"And just because individuals whose lives have 
uniqueness of meaning are here only objects of pur- 
suit, the attainment of this individuality, since it is 
indeed real, occurs not in our present form of con- 
sciousness That this individual life of all 

of us is not something limited in its temporal ex- 

[64] 



DISBELIEF IN AFTEE LIFE INCREASING 

pression to the life that we now experience, follows 
from the very fact that here nothing individual or 
final is found expressed." (Conceptions of Immor- 
tality, p. 144-5.) 

Such an argument of course appeals only to those 
who accept imagination for logic. It involves a con- 
ception of God which would be disputed by many. 

It demands a metaphysical concept of spiritual 
unity which may easily merge in the dissolving Nir- 
vana of the East, where the individual soul vanishes 
in the universal absorbent. It postulates the neces- 
sity of perfection, and thus a prophecy of a necessary 
after life, though as already shown there is nothing 
in human life or natural law that would compel such 
finality. 

From the above brief review of some of the once 
effective arguments favoring the doctrine of im- 
mortality, we may easily discover the reason why 
among myriads of thinking people the authority of 
the doctrine has faded and consequent indifference 
toward the possibility of an after life has been as- 
sumed. 

But all this has no bearing upon a scientific inves- 
tigation of the possibility of a fact in Nature; a 
doctrine relating to the alleged fact, whether proved 
or disproved, can have no relation, save in the func- 
tion of reasoning, to the natural phenomenon. 

Though a thousand arguments attempting to prove 
immortality may have failed, for want of logic or 
evidence, their fate has no bearing on the question 
whether or no, as a fact in nature, man who once 
lived upon this planet survives elsewhere. 

[65] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

Yet it is true that millions who once believed in 
the after life, because they accepted fragile arguments 
that seemed to sustain the doctrine, no longer do 
accept such doctrine, because of the logical failure of 
the arguments. And this experience accounts for the 
fact that there are in our own epoch perhaps fewer 
persons of culture and education, comparatively 
speaking, who accept the doctrine than in former 



[66] 



CHAPTER X 

The Astronomica] Negations 

Again, it is asked, if of all the countless millions 
who have died not one has returned to earth, whose 
return can be scientifically supported, are we not 
justified in inferring that when we die we are forever 
dead? 

If we could scientifically postulate a law in Nature 
that assures us of the possibility of a return of the 
dead, then the above argument would be effective. 
But we have no way of determining with scientific 
certainty the state of the dead or any possible relation 
which they may hold to this life. 

Therefore the non-return of any who have passed 
beyond the grave would have no bearing at all upon 
the issue. Contrarily, the presumption would be, 
not necessarily that because of this fact they are for- 
ever dead, but rather that they have assumed such 
forms of being and thrive in such realms as to make 
intercommunication and interrelation impossible. 

Another declaration is that insomuch as Astronomy 
has revealed to us countless dead worlds that lie in 
infinite space ; and that our earth, along with the solar 
system and the myriad of stars in the heavens is 
doomed to extinction; is it not an unjustifiable 
assumption on the part of infinitesimal man to 
imagine that he is the sole exception to the universal 
law of death ? 

[67] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

It must be admitted that of all the direct arguments 
which have been advanced by scientific thinkers 
against the probability of the continuity of individual 
life, this is perhaps the strongest. But there is a 
very weak spot in the armor of this argument as I 
have already shown in a previous chapter. Later 
astronomical discoveries, especially in physical astron- 
omy, and chemistry, have very largely disproved the 
assertion once universally accepted as true, that the 
solar system and all the stars in heaven are in a 
process of certain death, and wiU be finally extin- 
guished. All the planets dependent on central suns 
are now found not to depend for their vital heat upon 
the sun but upon certain chemical agencies inherent 
in their own material. As I have already covered 
this ground I will not repeat. (See Chapter VII.) 

The dead worlds which are now found in space are 
perhaps the results of interplanetary concussions, 
which caused their disruption. Our own moon also 
may be a dead world, because it was clipped ^ from 
the earth and cannot receive direct radiation from 
the sun, but only its reflected effects from the earth. 
Perhaps because of this fact it was not supplied with 
the radio-active forces that sustain planets. 

A fact carefully to be noted in connection with this 
argument is that death in Nature is nowhere a 
finality. Death means ceaseless resurrection or re- 

^"The history of the moon appears to have been one long series 
of tremendous catastrophes. Its origin according to the theory 
of (G. H.) Darwin which is now generally accepted, was a 
catastrophe sublime in its magnitude — the tearing asunder of 
the molten globe of the earth, or more properly speaking, the 
stripping off by centrifugal force of a large portion of its 
periphery. After the consolidation of the moon came another 
chain of catastrophes, the effects of which are plainly visible 
upon the lunar disk." (Prof. Garret P. Serviss.) 

[68] 



THE ASTRONOMICAL NEGATIONS 

turn to former states of existence. In this connection 
I must here introduce a very important quotation 
from an eminent and authentic scientist, which should 
put a final quietus on the force of this argument so 
often advanced. As I have said the universe is replete 
with deaths that are but preliminaries to resurrec- 
tion. Final death and destruction of solar worlds and 
systems are unknown in Nature. In a very recent 
work by Marion Erwin, entitled ''Universe and the 
Atom/' I find these very suggestive passages: 

*'If we had only one galaxy of systems, and all the 
outside space be void, all the suns in that system 
would long since have radiated their heat into space, 
and by loss of kinetic energy the entire system would 
be non-luminous and dead. If there are processes 
going on which will inevitably bring the entire physi- 
cal universe to a kinetic death, at some definite time 
in the future (since time in the past is unlimited) 
the human mind cannot escape the conclusion that 
the death event should long ago have happened.'^ 

The fact that it has not long ago happened as it 
should by all the laws of Nature, would seem to prove 
that it will never happen and the imagined super- 
lative death of all universes and systems is apparently 
a scientific myth. For he continues: 

''Nor does it aid us to imagine a beginning of the 
process, unless we assume that we have under con- 
sideration only one system of a still larger universe, 
and that in this endless universe there is going on 
by operation of natural laws, an endless cycle of 
birth, life, death and resurrection of systems. If 
one system is going to its death because of the grad- 
ual loss of kinetic energy through radiation, outward 
into space, there must be another system in process 
of building elsewhere.^' (118-20) 

[69] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

What, then, astronomy intimates to us, as the old 
line of thinkers insisted, is not the certainty of death 
as an absolute principle and fact in the infinite uni- 
verse, but only a passing from birth to death and 
from death to re-birth in resurrection. The argu- 
ment is really a boomerang and returns to destroy 
the force of the old insistence on the foolishness of 
imagining future life for a human being, in face of 
the fact of universal death everywhere else. Just 
the contrar^^ is proved, or at least illustrated by 
astronomy. 

This same author further forcibly remarks: 
''We must therefore conceive that in the universe 
Matter is being created by radiation from other mat- 
ter all the time ; that there is going on all the time 
the gathering up of this new born matter by gravita- 
tion into clusters and suns ; that in time these suns 
go to a kinetic death, and finally the matter of which 
they are composed is converted again into ether sub- 
stance. Thus we have an endless cycle of tirths, lives, 
deaths and resurrections in the 'material universe." 
(p. 289.) (Italics by the author.) 

''So in the empty sky the stars appear, 

Are bright in heaven marching through the sky, 

Spinning their planets, each one to his year, 

Tossing their fiery hair until they die; 

Then in the tower afar the watcher sees 

The sun, that burned, less noble than it was, 

Less noble still, until by dim degrees 

No spark of him is specklike in his glass. 

Then blind and dark in heaven the sun proceeds. 

Vast, dead, and hideous, knocking on his moons. 

Till crashing on his like, creation breeds. 

Striking such life, a constellation swoons. 

From dead things striking fire a new sun springs — 

New fire, new life, new planets with new wings. ^ 

2Jolin Maiefield. f 70 1 



THE ASTRONOMICAL NEGATIONS 

If, however, it be true that organized worlds ac- 
tually perish in time, it does not demonstrate as al- 
ready stated that the energy of resuscitation does 
not persist. On the contrary it is now learned that 
it does persist, and by reason of this principle there 
is enacted upon the stage of the universe the ever- 
lasting drama of birth, death and resurrection. In 
other words, there may be said to exist a sort of life- 
germ of worlds and planets which forever operates in 
the life and death, and death and life, of the ever 
expiring and yet ever living spheres. 

Therefore, though in the universe universal death 
prevails, equally life universal is everywhere. 

To argue then that it is an inconsistency and an 
exhibtion of indecent egotism in man to assume that 
though once dying he may live again, is at least 
not consistent with the methods of Nature. For Na- 
ture permits death to revive in life. Of course the 
problem involved in human after-life would lie in 
the possibility of the continuity of the living prin- 
ciple in a form of survival after death; for its con- 
tinuity in the form of the life-germ on this planet 
is now conceded. 

However it might with equal consistency be argued 
that because death is so manifestly universal on this 
planet it is absurd and futile to argue that any form 
of survival can manifest itself. Were it not for 
Weismann's discovery, corroborated by many biolo- 
gists since, we would indeed be justified in such an 
assertion. But now we know that the invisible germ 
continues on deathlessly if not overtaken by accident 
or catastrophe. 

[71] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

Hence Nature has taught us that at least the con- 
ception of some form of survival is not absurd or 
inconsistent, and that it is not unscientific or illogical 
for us to search for further forms that may possibly 
involve that of personal continuity in some other 
phase of matter in another plane of existence. 

The question is at least suggestive if we ask: May 
it not be possible that just as there is a physical 
germ, in the human organism, which is inherently in- 
destructible, and if not intercepted will forever ag- 
gregate to itself sufficient visible substance to reveal 
itself in protozoic or metazoic forms of animal life, 
so may there not also be a persistent germ of in- 
visible substance so organized as to be susceptible of 
persistent existence in another plane of matter, 
through which the life of an individual may manifest 
itself? 

This is the one line of investigation on the physical 
side, as I shall attempt to show in Part II which is 
strictly scientific and may afford fruitful results. 

Thus the reference to astronomy rebounds upon 
the supposed argument against a possible immortality 
and by inference supports the affirmation of it as a 
natural probability, or, at least, a logical possibility. 



[72] 



CHAPTER XI 

The Animal World and Future Life 

A fourth objection sometimes presented is the fol- 
lowing : As Science has proved man 's evolution from 
the lower animals; and that the difference between 
him and them is a difference in degree and not in 
kind; if the lower animals have no future life, how 
can man have a future life? 

There are several propositions that must here be 
singly considered in making an answer to the above 
assertions. First, as to the difference in degree be- 
tween man and animals. Undoubtedly the proposi- 
tion as stated is correct. But the very fact that there 
is a fixed and arrested development in the lower ani- 
mals indicates an attainment in man that speaks a 
fuller and more triumphant unfoldment. There is a 
difference between the two kingdoms; but the point 
to be observed is that the history and destiny of the 
lower kingdoms are completed and finished with no 
possibility of further development. That is, by no 
possibility in the range of natural law as now opera- 
tive can the lesser degree of the lower animal kingdom 
be enlarged till it shall merge in the capacity of the 
kingdom of man. 

The culmination of evolution was attained in 
ancient millenniums, indeed, as shown in the mani- 
festations of embryological development. But at each 
particular stage where the lower species stopped in 

[73] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

their unfoldment, there they remain ; and while once 
the anthropoid apes did diverge from a former species 
and from them, hypothetically, man descended, yet 
the present anthropoids remain apes and always will 
be apes. In short the planetary history or drama 
of evolution, in so far as it relates to the transmuta- 
tion of the species, is ended. 

But while the history of the lower kingdoms is 
ended, that apparently of man has just begun. 
Therefore, secondly, the probable fact that lower ani- 
mals have no future life really has no bearing on 
man's possible future existence. For who shall be so 
bold as to declare that man has reached the zenith of 
his psychic and mental, or even of his physical pos- 
sibilities ? 

Man's reach is ever onward and upward; that of 
the animals is at full stop. Therefore instead of 
this evident fact in evolution indicating that be- 
cause apparently the lower animal kingdoms have 
no future life, neither should man have immortal life, 
it would seem to prophesy ahnost the exact opposite 
for the Kingdom of Man. 

The lower animal kingdoms give no indication, nor 
justify a prophecy, of future life, because their de- 
velopment has ceased, and their psychic and physical 
capacities have reached a full stop; therefore per 
contra, precisely because the kingdom of man has not 
only not paused in its development, but is forging 
ahead to unimagined possibilities, logically this de- 
velopment should not end but go on forever. Evolu- 
tion thus seems to be a sustainer rather than an op- 

[74] 



THE ANIMAL WORLD AND FUTUBE LIFE 

ponent of the prophecy and probability of future life 
for mankind. 

But again, it is asked, if man has an immortal 
soul and the lower animals have not, how, and at 
what particular moment in his development, did man 
get his immortal soul? This is a remarkably good 
and efficient question and must be clearly and fear- 
lessly met. 

It is not probable that we know yet enough of 
the whole nature of man to give an absolutely true 
answer. However, led by the indications of our 
present knowledge, we can approach it. 

Before we attempt to assert anything, scientifically, 
about the human soul, we must study the physical 
instrumentality through which it expresses itself. 
When in a scientific sense we speak about the soul, 
we do not mean that it connotes the theological con- 
cept, as a something distinct and apart from the 
body in all its peculiarities. By the soul, scientifically 
construed, we must mean the sum-total of all the 
psychic powers ; not in the sense of having been pre- 
viously created and co-ordinated in the human sys- 
tem by some divine agency; but rather as a group 
or body of capacities or powers, of distinctive psychic 
quality, co-terminously begun and co-incidentally de- 
veloped with the human body. 

In the lower kingdoms we find, then, an utter ab- 
sence of the physical apparatus which exists in man 
for the expression of his psychic attributes. The 
central nervous system, ^ as organized and completed 

i"I believe therefore that we are safe in drawing th© line between 
intelligent and unintelligent behavior, between psychic or mental 
and non-psyGhic behavior at the point where we pass from the 

[75] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

in mankind is wanting in the highest species of the 
lower animal kingdoms. 

Here then would be the first indication of a cleavage 
or distinctive differentiation inherent in the two ani- 
mal kingdoms, that of the lower species and of man. 
It wonld seem, then, that a correct answer to this 
question would be, in the first place, that man must 
have begun the acquisition of what we choose to call 
his soul, at the beginning of his attainment, as an ani- 
mal, of the characteristics of a human being : — When 
there developed what we call the apparatus of the 
central nervous system, and especially the distinctive 
convolutions of the gray matter of the human brain, 
then the soul of man, as a group of distinctive psychic 
activities, begun to manifest itself. But we are per- 
mitted to go a little further in our investigation and 
discern a still more complete differentiation in the 
psychic capacities between the two kingdoms, by 
studying the development of the human brain. 

We find that the brain of man is but rudimentally 
developed during a long period of infancy, and that 
the especial faculty which is utilized in the higher 
mental activities of man is wanting in the lower ani- 
mal species. Elsewhere I have said on this point: 
**The higher we ascend in the scale of animal or- 
ganisms the more complex becomes the nervous ap- 
paratus and the profounder the consciousness of the 

animals •without a central nervous system to those with a cen- 
tral nervous system. As we shall see it may be possible to 
draw this line still higher up in the evolutionary scale. By 
this I mean that an animal without a central nervous system 
is incapable of Intelligent and conscious behavior and cannot 
manifest psychic phenomena, but that such behavior and pheno- 
mena may appear as the central nervous system develops." 
"The Science of Human Behavior," Maurice Parmelee. (Mc- 
Millans, p 262.) (Boldface type by the author.) 

[76] 



THE ANIMAL WORLD AND FUTURE LIFE 

individual, till it ascends into self -consciousness, and 
still higher possible forms of self-realization. It is 
true there also developes in parallel lines a more 
complex system of nerves and cranial cells. We learn 
from the modern biologists that, indeed, the human 
brain has not only developed a much more harmon- 
ious and complex cellular organism than all inferior 
animals, but that there has developed a special 
frontal organ, which Haeckel calls the phronema; 
that the presence of this cellular organ makes thought 
possible to a highly developed human being which is 
impossible to lower animal forms of life. Indeed, 
even the child has not, when newly born, this cranial 
organ, save in a rudimentary phase, nor does it ap- 
pear until after the first year. As the child develops 
this psychological organ grows commensurately with 
the unfoldment of its intelligence." (Modern Light 
on Immortality" second ed. p 380.) 

If then we are challenged to answer just when and 
where the soul of man rises to the possibility of im- 
mortality, whereas that of the lower animals give 
no promise of it; we should say that at the birth of 
the human being you have the rudimentary soul, 
whose cleaveage is distinct in psychic capacity and 
prophecy from that of the souls of animals; and sec- 
ond, you have the distinctive promise of potential 
immortality when the higher cortical convolutions 
are begun and the frontal apparatus of self-conscious 
thought (the phronema) is exfoliated. 

Therefore, in this particular also, the science of 
evolution, instead of seeming to deny the possibility 
of immortality to human beings, whereas it does not 
seem to warrant it of the lower species, rather en- 
courages and re-inforces the probability, in the hu- 
man species. 

[77] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

Le Conte has forcibly said: "The emergence of 
self-consciousness — a change so wonderful that it may 
well be called the birth of a spirit — ^takes place only 
at the age of two or three years. Now for the first 
time we have phenomena distinctive of humanity. 
But some one will ask how is this consistent with im- 
mortality ? In answer let me again remind the reader 
that with every new form of force, with every new 
birth of universal energy into a higher plane, there 
appear new, unexpected and, previous to experience, 
wholly unimaginable properties and powers. This 
last birth is of course no exception. Why may not 
immortality be one of the new properties?" (Evo- 
lution of Religious Thought Ch IV, p. 317-323.) 

It may be one of the new properties, I would say, 
not in the sense of being de novo, or a gift of power 
bestowed upon the soul, but a fruition of inherent 
tendency, a prophecy of persistent and continuous 
growth and unfoldment. 

Once self-consciousness is begun it is impossible to 
prophesy its complete history or destiny, so long as 
there is a medium through which it can express it- 
self. 

This leads, naturally, to an old and supposedly in- 
controvertible objection. As physiology and psy- 
chology have demonstrated that mind is a function 
of the brain and nervous system, how can the in- 
dividual mind survive the death of its organ — ^the 
brain? I have of course attempted to cover this ob- 
jection in the previous pages of this treatise and 
merely repeat the argument to give it a logical setting 
in this series of answers to alleged scientific disproofs 
of immortality. (See Chapter IV.) 

Until we are more intimately acquainted with the 
[78] 



THE ANIMAL WORLD AND FUTURE LIFE 

nature of matter, and especially the subtle substance 
which seems to be organized in the nervous and 
cranial systems of the human organism, we cannot 
possibly assert anything as to the future of the human 
being, within the limitations of the brain. Until we 
know the complete history of the force utilized by 
the brain in thought, and whether that force is cap- 
able of aggregating invisible substance which persists 
to act and think, independent of the brain (as certain 
experiences indicate) we are disqualified to assert 
anything final as to the possibility of consciousness 
after the dissolution of the external brain of man. 

However, there is another answer to this timeworn 
objection that should not here be overlooked. When 
we easily assert that the mind is a function of the 
brain, we may be speaking without sufficient fore- 
thought. Undoubtedly brain and mind co-operate; 
undoubtedly so long as there is a brain the co-ordinat- 
ing action between the two will be so intimately as- 
sociated that it will always be difficult to determine 
in which lies the actual priority of function. 

In the answer already given I have explained the 
general principle that the action of rational process 
in Nature itself operated as a force which ultimated 
in the creation or evolution of the brain of the living 
organism. But a still more specific illustration of 
the probable or at least possible priority of the men- 
tal function, lies in the experience of what is known 
as the vicarious functioning of the mind. When, for 
instance, an organ ceases to function because of some 
lesion it has suffered, then another correlated organ 

[79] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

takes up the lost power of the affected organ and 
performs its duties for it. 

Now the question naturally presents itself, How is 
it possible for the brain (if by its cellular action alone 
thought is generated) to exercise the self -selecting 
function of forcing an organ into service to act in 
place of one that is put out of commission? If the 
brain is a mere mechanical machine then such a pos- 
sibility would be beyond its scope; it would be a 
miraculous performance. 

Supposing, for instance, that an engine had lost 
one of its wheels, and the other wheels of the engine, 
perceiving the trouble, instead of ceasing to act be- 
cause of the interference of friction should themselves 
take on the duties of the severed wheel and continue 
to carry the engine along. Would not that be a 
miraculous act on the part of the engine ? Or, would 
it not at least assume a power superior to merely 
mechanical action on the part of the engine? Why 
then is it not true that when the brain so acts it 
proves that it is energized by more than merely 
mechanistic powers, and is controlled by an intelli- 
gent and directing mind? 

*' Sometimes it happens," says Professor Schiller 
(Riddles of the Sphinx) **that the man (whose 
organs were ruined) after a time recovers his facul- 
ties, of which the injured brain had deprived him; 
and that, not in consequence of the renewal of the 
injured part, but in consequence of the inhibited 
function being performed by the vicarious action of 
the other parts — the only explanation being that, 
after a time, consciousness constitutes the remaining 
parts into a mechanism capable of acting as substi- 
tute for the lost parts." 

[80] 



THE ANIMAL WORLD AND FUTURE LIFE 

This seems to be the only rational explanation ; and 
if it is correct then it would indicate the ultimate 
priority of mental over mechanical function in the 
human brain. So far then as this correlation be- 
tween mind and brain has any bearing on the pos- 
sibility of a future existence it would lend itself to 
the affirmation rather than the denial of its possi- 
bility. For if the mind can so function that it can 
command the submission of inactive and unaccus- 
tomed organs to the performance of duties foreign to 
their experience and previous education, it would 
indicate that it possesses a controlling influence over 
matter in all its forms. 

Therefore, if the crude brain expires it may yet 
leave a refined substance, of far more durable nature 
than the cranial cells, through which it may continue 
to function. If thought actually operates in the 
plane of radio-activity or electro-magnetism as some 
contend, then the controlling mind may carry on its 
future labors in this magical substance which is just 
beginning to be studied by man. 



[81] 



CHAPTER XII 

The Anthropological Negations 

There is still another argument which with some 
minds is very impressive and almost conclusive. It 
asserts that as Anthropology has shown that the idea 
of a future life had its origin in the dreams of primi- 
tive savages ; ^ and as it is admitted that the savage 
interpretation of dreams is erroneous; there can be 
no logical justification to the attitude that the super- 
stitious ideas of the savage mind MAY possibly event- 
uate in scientific truth. 

Because the vaporings of a heathen world, which, 
not having correct data to work from in an unscien- 
tific age, mistook a man's shadow for another being 
distinct from himself, and speculated that it must 
survive him in bliss or woe, after his personal de- 
cease; many insist that the whole conception of an 
after life is nothing more than a mythical product 
of incoherent, savage vagaries. 

Primitive man saw that a man's shadow resembled 

iFrom Frazer's "Belief in Immortality:" 

' 'What is the kind of experience from which the theory of human 
immortality is derived? . . . The savage .... finds a very 
strong argument for immortality in the phenomena of dreams, 
which he commonly fails to discriminate from what we popu- 
larly call waking (?) realities. Hence when the images of 
persons whom he knows to be dead appear to him in a dream, 
he naturally infers that those persons exist somewhere and 
somehow apart from our bodies, of the decay and destruction 
of which he has had occular demonstration. How could he 
see dead people, he avers, if they do not exist? . . , That he 
sees the dead only in dreams does not shake his belief since he 
thinks the appearances of dreams just as real as the appear- 
ances of the waking hours." (Introduction.) 

[82] 



THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL NEGATIONS 

himself, and looked like another man — ^his double. It 
never deserted him till he went into darkness, and 
therefore it must leave him when he descended into 
the dark tomb. 

Hence all the dreams of Pluto and Hades, and the 
accumulation of Scriptural myths and superstitions 
in all religions of the past! 

The force of this objection is immediately destroyed 
when we reflect that all human knowledge has been 
the outcome of the promptings of human error. Had 
it not been for the superstitions and errors that 
sprung from ignorance, and the consequent sufferings 
they entailed on humanity, there would have been no 
knowledge of Nature and no science of the universe. 

All the sciences have begun in erroneous surmises 
— ^in the dreams and vagaries that sprung from man 's 
ignorance and necessities. 

How much we owe to the meanderings of the mind 
of ancient shepherds who surveyed the heavens, and 
built up poetic possibilities for mankind in what they 
read in the stars! Have we not today the noble 
science of astronomy, which sprung from the ignorant 
presumptions and prognostications of ancient as- 
trology? Shall we say that all our deductions and 
understanding of the stars and the heavens, vouch- 
safed to us by modern investigations, must be fal- 
lacious because they primarily sprung from the frothy 
vaporings of ignoramuses who scanned the starry 
worlds? 

Because there was a Paracelsus, and a Cagliostro, 
shall we therefore say that all the discoveries of 
modern chemistry are to be scoffed at and rejected in- 

[83] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

asmuch as they sprung from ancient vaporings of 
heathen or Christian ignoramuses, who falsely 
dreamed of alchemy, and the transmutation of 
metals ? 

How often has it occurred that through the pur- 
suit of a scientific will o' the wisp, a genuine discovery 
has been attained ! Was it not because of the theory 
of spontaneous generation which at one time occupied 
the attention of an age ignorant of scientific method, 
and afterward hypnotized many scientific geniuses 
only to disappoint them, that a marvellous discovery 
was reached which has proved the deliverance of the 
age from its many diseases? If it had not been for 
that old theory, sprung from man's egregious ig- 
norance of the nature of life, we had not had a 
Pasteur, who set out to find what life is, and fetched 
up with a discovery of the germ of life, and its my- 
riad effects on human history? Because this great 
discovery originated in the ignorant suppositions or 
vaporings of minds ill-informed and primitive, shall 
we therefore declare that it must be false? 

Now in like manner they who insist that there can 
be no truth or possibility in the hypothesis of im- 
mortality because it originated in the savage dreams 
of primitive people or the vaporings of ignorant ages, 
are building on a fallacious foundation. For the very 
fact that the idea of a soul and an after life originated 
in the ignorant imaginings of savages and primitive 
peoples led to man's more serious investigation of 
what seemed to be an innate idea, which awaits a final 
scientific solution. We are not to brush it aside be- 

[84] 



THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL NEGATIONS 

cause it originated in the dreams of savages, but we 
are justified in analysing that dream and following 
out its intimations till we shall learn the final truth 
relative to man's destiny. 



[85] 



CHAPTER XIII 

Intimations of Physical Immortality 

Thus after reviewing all the objections of a serious 
and scientific character against the possibility of life 
after death, I am forced to the conclusion that the 
only legitimate, unprejudiced, undogmatic and ra- 
tional attitude to hold is, at least, one of tentative 
agnosticism. It may be, with the present state of 
human knowledge relative to man and the universe. 
Science is indeed not yet justified in asserting even 
tentatively the actuality or perhaps the probability 
of such a future existence ; but within the scope of all 
the arguments advanced I cannot find where she is 
justified in absolutely denying its possibility, or pos- 
tulating it as pure myth which gives no promise of 
scientific verification. 

If I may so put it, the existing ignorance of 
science relative to great fundamental problems in- 
volving human life and universal evolution, would 
logically force it to maintain a state of cautious in- 
vestigation and dignified abeyance, until these prob- 
lems may have been solved. At the present stage of 
scientific information to make bold and unqualified 
declarations that the conception is a mere myth and 
that Nature extends no hope or promise of such an 
event in the future, it seems to me, is going vast 
lengths beyond what justifies such an attitude. 

I will enumerate here a series of reasons why I 

[86] 



INTIMATIONS OF PHYSICAL IMMORTALITY 

think the scientific attitude should, at least, be one 
of considerate agnosticism rather than one of oppo- 
sition and positive denial. 

(1) Science is still too ignorant concerning the 
nature and origin of planetary life to pronounce 
final judgment as to its potential continuity. But 
a few generations ago, for instance, the notion that 
even the physical life upon this planet could be made 
to have indefinite existence would have been scouted 
as the merest piffle and rejected with scorn. But 
we have now learned through the labors of Alexis 
Carel, and other eminent biologists, that the condi- 
tions of life may be so environed that indefinite ex- 
istence, in short, potential human immortality on this 
plane, may be postulated as almost a scientific as- 
surance. When I wrote the following sentence in my 
"Modern Light on Immortality" (p 448) in 1910, 
it was met with considerable incredulity and brushed 
aside as a mere rhetorical flourish : I had presented 
twenty-three propositions showing the bearings of 
science on a possible after life and then said: ''it 
seems to me that one of two logical conclusions follow 
as the necessary corollary of the theses thus enum- 
erated: First; That when mankind shall have dis- 
covered the secret laws that appertain to the art 
of living, to Nature's own marvellous principles of 
life-sustentation, we shall have overcome the mystery 
of death and shall continue to live and fructify in 
the no longer mortal bodies we now occupy." 

Very soon after the publication of this work the 
whole world was amazed at the information of almost 
uncanny results that had been obtained by Dr. Carel 
and others which fully sustained the proposition I 

[87] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

had above enunciated. Although that corollary when 
first written in 1909 appeared to be an exaggeration 
or a mere figment of imagination, already concrete 
experiments were being prosecuted which demon- 
strated the verity of the deduction, namely, that phy- 
sical immortality on this planet lies within the imme- 
diate possibility of the future. 

It is, indeed, interesting and suggestive to note how 
rapidly Dr. Card's experiments are approximating 
a demonstration of the possibility of persistent con- 
tinuity of the physical life. He first showed that 
living tissues may be forced to a continuity of ex- 
istence, outside the body, and now he is rapidly dis- 
covering how the connective tissue (the tissue of 
which the greater part of the body is composed) may 
be made subject to indefinite growth in spite of nat- 
ural decay, and its existence indefinitely prolonged. 
This problem once worked out means the indefinite 
prolongation of the life of an organism, including 
the human body. 

Dr. Carel declares, as the result of his discovery 
(thus offsetting the failures of Maupas and Calkins, 
and their conclusions, in this field) that ''the dynamic 
condition of a strain of connective tissue cells, which 
have been living in a given medium for some time, is 
not a definitely acquired characteristic, but a tem- 
porary state, and is the product of a function of the 
medium in which the cells are living; and is readily 
modified merely by altering the composition of the 
medium." (Journal of Experimental Medicine- — 
August, 1913.) 

A writer in the N. Y. Times, Sunday, Sept. 14th, 
[88] 



INTIMATIONS OF PHYSICAL IMMORTALITY 

1913, referring to Dr. Carel's achievements, says, 
*'This scientist has not only found a way to make 
connective tissue live permanently and grow outside 
of the organism from which it was taken, but he is 
now able to prepare a medium in which it grows, so 
that he can actually regulate that growth. He can in 
crease, decrease or halt it." 

In other words, when science has completed its 
research in this department, we shall have learned 
the secret of life in an organism and the way by 
which indefinitely to prolong the existence of any 
living body at the will of the possessor. 

This is an age in which the dreams of musty su- 
perstitions of the past seem to be becoming scientific 
realities. It is not remarkable that popular maga- 
zine writers express surprise at these results, like 
Millard, who exclaims, "Through his (Carel's) ex- 
periments, science may attain its age-long dream of 
bridging death with a chain of never-ending life;" 
or, like Hendrick, who declares, "He has not dem- 
onstrated that life itself can be generated chemically^ 
but he has practically shown that immortality is; 
merely a question of chemical reaction." (McClure's 
Jan. 1913.) This discovery leads us to our second 
deduction, namely: 

(2) Science is not justified in proclaiming proto- 
plasm, the physical basis of life — as subject to in- 
herent decay and ultimate dissolution. Huxley's fa- 
mous dictum, of 1868, "Under whatever guise it takes 
refuge, fungus or oak, worm or man, the living proto- 
plasm not only dies and is resolved into its mineral 
and lifeless constituemts, but is ialways dying, and 

£89] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

strange as the paradox may sound, could not live 
unless it died,'' is now referred to only as a mythical 
scientific notion of the past. 

The real living substance never dies except by ac- 
cident. So long as the environment permits its sus- 
tenance it continues to live, for. as has already been 
said in a previous chapter, the life-germ or plasm is 
persistent, continuous, and race-regenerating. 

(3) "When we consider the cell of life Science is 
yet too illy informed to declare that it contains no 
elements which may suiwive death. As just above set 
forth, before the labors of Carel, it had been con- 
cluded by IMaupas and Calkins, and others, that the 
primitive forms of life, the one-celled animals, were 
subject to absolute death by a natural process of de- 
cay. But the more recent biological researches have 
shown the fallacy of this conclusion, and have dem- 
onstrated the potential immort-ality or the germ- 
plasm, or substance of which the cell is composed. 
(See Appendix '''D.") 

It is assumed by science that there is a simple. 
undifferentiated life-substance, even antecedent to 
what is popularly known as a protoplasm, which con- 
stitutes the logical basis of protoplasm and the cell 
formations. This is not demonstrable under the 
microscope but is a logical necessity in the evolution 
of life upon this planet. There are of course some 
who contend that such an alleged primary substance 
is mythical and has no existence. But most of the 
great biologists accept the hypothesis. ''That the 
cell consists of mere elementary units'' says Dr. Wil- 
son ("On the Cell and Heredity,'' p. 21\ "is indi- 

[90] 



INTIMATIONS OF PHYSICAL IMMORTALITY 

cated by a priori evidence so cogent as to have driven 
many of the foremost leaders of biological thought 
into the belief that such units must exist whether or 
not the miscroscope reveals them to view. Among those 
who have accepted this conception are numbered such 
men as Spencer, Darwin, Beale, Haeckel, Michael, 
Foster, Naegeli, DeVries, Wissner, Roux, Weismann, 
N. Oscar Hertig, Verworn, and Whitman." 



[91] 



CHAPTER XIY 

The Self-Perpetuation of the 
Life Cell 

(4) While Science is still holding but a tentative 
attitude in reference to the beginning of the cell, and 
the substance from which the cell evolves and attains 
to its high complexity, it would not seem that it is 
justified in sealing it with any final limitations, as to 
its possible future history. It may contain a sub- 
stance which in itself is capable of over-riding the 
shock and disintegration of the cruder substance of 
the mortal flesh. I do not say that it is possessed of 
such inherent capacity, but that science durst not de- 
clare its incapacity in this regard until it is more ab- 
solutely acquainted with all the powers and attributes 
of this primary hypothetical life substance. The fact 
that the life-cell has recently demonstrated its power 
to disregard the ordinary tendency of planetary de- 
cay, and continue its life here perpetually, if properly 
fed, as shown by Carel, would, certainly, sufficiently 
warrant a pause in our conclusion that the cell, when 
it actually dies, has exhausted all the .potencies of its 
inherent nature. Wilson insists that ''we are com- 
pelled by the most stringent evidence to admit that 
the ultimate basis of living matter is not a single 
chemical substance, but a mixture of many substances 
that are self-perpetuating without loss of their speci- 
fic character." (Italics by the author.) 

[92] 



SELF-PERPETUATION OF THE LIFE CELL 

If these substances of the cell are self -perpetuating, 
in mixture with other substances, without loss of their 
specific characters, we do not yet seem to be justified 
(at least until we have discovered the absolute nature 
and capacity of the single ultimate substance from 
which all cell-force and its complex machinery is 
made) to declare that when the cell itself outwardly 
dissolves it does not leave over a residue of invisible 
matter that may acquire its sustenance from some 
invisible element and continue its existence. 

In my work ''Psychic Phenomena, Science and 
Immortality" I have attempted to show that this mys- 
terious ultimate life-substance may be of a radio-ac- 
tive nature, and just as the planet itself, it is now 
known, is sustained by this heat-generating and vital- 
izing energy, so the life substance may be, and from 
it acquire the power of self-perpetuation of which 
now we can know nothing. 

If this were true, then it would immediately bridge 
the gulf between apparent death and continuous life 
by a scientific fact that would easily explain the prob- 
lem. As there have been so many recent surprises 
in scientific discovery, it would not appear fatuous 
to postulate the possibility that this energy does in- 
here in the ultimate life substance and is qualified 
with self-perpetuating powers, which operate in in- 
visible realms, and may constitute the frame-work of 
future psychic activities. 

I have elaborated this theory with a large aggrega- 
tion of scientific facts, relative thereto in the work 
above referred to, and will not here further repeat 
the argument. I have merely to say that until science 

[93] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

is more thoroughly acquainted with the complex 
machinery of the cell of life, and especially with the 
nature and attributes of the hypothetical substance 
from which it must be manufactured, it is not justi- 
fied in making any final announcement concerning a 
possible future existence, for which the secret sub- 
stance of the cell may afford a potential foundation. 



[94] 



CHAPTER XV 

Vitalism and Biotic Energy 

(5) The camps of science are as yet all too di- 
vided on the problem of Vitalism, for the justification 
of any absolute declaration of the impossibility of 
continuity of vital energy in another form of matter 
after death. Such biologists as Lankester, Haeckel, 
practically the whole German School, in fact, Bastian 
and many others are outspoken in their declaration 
that Vitalism as a principle in Nature has no exis- 
tence, save as a phase of transmuted physical energy. 
But it is known that recently there has been a great 
reaction from the views of these investigators toward 
the older conception of Vitalism. 

Bateson, for instance, ("Heredity", Smithsonian 
Kept. 1910) says: 

''Of the physics and chemistry of life we know 
nothing. Somehow the characters of living things 
are bound up in properties of colloids, and are 
largely determined by the chemical powers of en- 
zymes, but the study of this class of matter has just 
begun. Living things are found by experiment to 
have powers undreamt of, and who knows what is 
behind?" 

While thus ignorant of the most transforming and 
puzzling of all natural forces how absurd to make 
any final declaration as to its possibilities or future 
development ! 

At one time the scientists were glibly asserting 
that the ascent from the lowest forms of life to the 

[95] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

highest was no less discernible than the ascent from 
inert forms of matter to the germinal departure of 
living organisms. But now science is getting far 
more cautious in considering these problems. ''On 
the whole I think it is very manifest that there is 
abroad on all sides a greater spirit of hesitation and 
caution than of old," says Prof. D'Arcy W. Thomp- 
son (Chairman of Natural History, Univ. of St. 
Andrews, Dundee, Scot.) in his Presidential address 
before the British Ass'n for the Advancement of 
Science, reported in Smithsonian Annual of 1911. 
He continues to remark, that "the gulf between the 
lowest forms of life and the inorganic world is as 
wide, if not wider, than it seemed a couple of genera- 
tions ago." There is indeed, a strong reaction, even 
in the German School, for Driesch, who was at one 
time an outspoken anti-vitalist, as the result of more 
thorough and recent research, has completely altered 
his former attitude and is now a foremost vitalist. 
To show how marked the reaction is I quote from 
"Age, Growth and Death" (Dr. Minot) who says: 
"A Vital Force is the only reasonable hypothesis/. . . 
So little has been gained since 1879 (in which year 
his work was first published) to 1909 .... in our com- 
prehension of the basic phenomena of living things 
that were I to re-write the treatise I should not change 
it materially. The vitalistic hypothesis still seems to 
me scientifically the best."^ 

^On this much mooted problem Moore in his very recent "The 
Origin of Nature and Life", (Holt's Home Univ. Lib.) says 
pointedly : 

"Some term is obviously required applicable to the entirely peculiar 
set of energy phenomena witnessed in Iving matter, such as 
biotic energy. Heat energy and electrical energy are mutually 

[96] 



VITALISM AND BIOTIC ENERGY 

Whether or not we approve of this reaction, and 
these vitalistic theories, the point I am making is that 
so long as the scientific camps are divided and a scien- 
tific consensus cannot be acquired on this great issue 
it is not becoming or sagacious in scientific leaders 
to insist on a final and conclusive declaration concern- 
ing the ultimate tendency of a natural force of which 
at present they stand in such ignorance. 

While the nature and possibilities of this force are 
still undetermined, and the possible development of 
its energy even in physical manifestations on this 
planet cannot yet be foreseen or comprehended, it 
would seem that we must await a time when more 
complete knowledge has been acquired before we de- 
cide absolutely, whether or no this force has the power 
to carry on its activity in an invisible region, after it 
has departed the limitations of the fleshly organism. 

transmutable one into the other, yet it is not said that elec- 
trical energy is heat or light because these appear when it is 
transformed. Why, then, should a form of energy such as 
inhabits living structures be thought to be only a mixture of 
heat and electricity and chemical energy, because these are 
observed vs^hen it manifests itself? The position which denies 
the existence of a form of energy characteristic of life is one 
of peculiar absurdity even for the pure mechanician, which can 
only be explained as a natural reaction from the entirely dif- 
ferent mediaeval conception of a vital force which worked im- 
possible miracles. As well because of the errors connected 
with the idea of 'phlogiston' might the present ideas regarding 
'energy' as a whole be scouted." (225; 226.) 



[97] 



CHAPTER XVI 

Consciousness and Brain Action 

(6) We must realize that so long as the phenom- 
enon of self-consciousness in human beings presents 
insoluble problems to scientific study, we should be 
modest in our decision as to the possible future his- 
tory of such an attribute. No one is able yet to de- 
cide the actual origin and nature of consciousness. 

Some argue it is an incidental condition accom- 
panying certain nervous activities, an epi-phenom- 
enon — or that it is a function of the brain, resulting 
from the action of the reflex arc system of the nerves 
and ganglia. 

Says Prof. Elliot: ''Modern researches into the 
physiology of the nervous system indicate that the 
reflex arc is the functional unit of the system, and 
indeed, that the system has been built up in the 
course of evolution by the multiplication of reflex 
arcs and their superimposition one upon the other to 
a degree of almost infinite number and complexity. . . . 
A stimulus at one end of the arc is conveyed down an 
'afferent' nerve to the central ganglion, whence pro- 
ceeds a further impulse along on 'efferent' nerve to, 
say, a muscle, which thereupon undergoes a contrac- 
tion. . . . Given this reflex arc preparation in a fit 
functional condition, the effect is bound to follow the 
cause, and the whole process works with the same 
inevitable certainty as the law of gravitation." 

This sounds very simple and convincing. Yet when 
we contemplate the state of feeling which accompanies 
these reflex-arc-conditions and functions, we naturally 

[98] 



CONSCIOUSNESS AND BRAIN ACTION 

ask how are the reflexes transformed from mere physi- 
cal impulses into mental states of consciousness? It 
is undoubtedly true, as Elliot says, ''It is not the will 
that stimulates the nerves. They are stimulated by 
the nerve processes within the brain and with these 
processes the spiritual wiU has no more to do than an 
inert and accompanying shadow." 

That, as I say, may indeed be true. But what we 
must account for is what the professor calls ''the 
spiritual will." That is the state of consciousness 
which we caU volition and which we cannot discern as 
a mere physical function. Again it may be true, as 
he says, that "it is found by actual experiment that 
the quantity of energy emanating from the organisms 
is precisely equal to that absorbed into the organism, 
mainly in the form of chemical energy in the food." 

But the problem that science must still solve is how 
this energy of food, or chemical combustion, is trans- 
muted into the feeling or state of mind known as 
consciousness. We can readily understand how the 
food taken into the system releases by combustion the 
energy it contains and that that energy is used up 
in the muscular action of the body. But that merely 
accounts for the physical transmutation of energy. 

We can understand how the food releases heat in 
the body and thus sustains its vitality. But do we 
understand how the physical motion known as heat 
is transmuted into the mental sensation recognized 
as heatf Do we understand how the amount of food 
we take into our systems is transmuted into the 
thoughts which emanate from our brains ? 

We can readily understand how the energy of the 

[99] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

consumed food may assist the function of the reflex 
arcs and thus suffer the physical functions of the body 
to be performed ; but do we understand how this same 
food-energy becomes the consciousness of will or 
choice, whereby we solve the great problems of exis- 
tence and conquer obstacles? Professor John Fiske 
has weU said: 

"If we could trace in detail the metamorphosis of 
motion within the body from the sense organs of the 
brain and thence onward to the muscular system, it 
would be somewhat as follows: the inward motion 
carrying the message into the brain would perish in 
connection with the vibration which accompanies the 
conscious state, and this vibration, in turn, would 
perish in giving place to the outward motion carrying 
the message out to the muscles. If we had the means 
of measurement we could prove the equivalence step 
by step." 

Thus far, Fiske is in exact accord with Elliot who 
says, "the transaction is similar to the conditions 
existing when a large number of billiard balls are 
arranged in a straight line a few inches from each 
other. Propelling the balls from one end of the line 
against the centre of the next ball, the end ball gives 
up its entire motion to the second ball: the end baU 
comes to an entire stop, while the second ball carries 
the action on to the third ball. In this way the orig- 
inal impulse travels right down the line ; each ball in 
turn takes up the motion from the one behind, and 
passes it on to the one in front immediately coming 
to rest itself." 

So far these two professors exactly agree in the 
description of the nervous process and function. But 
now Prof. Fiske goes on to say: "But where would 
the conscious state — the thought, the feeling come in 
the circuit. Why, nowhere! The physical circuit of 
motions is complete in itself. . . . Conscious life forms 

[100] 



CONSCIOUSNESS AND BRAIN ACTION 

no part of the closed circuit but stands entirely out- 
side it/' 

It would appear that until this difficult problem is 
solved, until science really determines what conscious- 
ness — thought, sensation, volition, — really is, not by 
merely describing the functional process of the ap- 
paratus through which it works, but its own nature 
and possibilities, we are yet far from determining its 
future history on this plane or its possible function- 
ing in another plane. 

It is quite probable that we shall find the apparatus 
is not as simple as it appears to be from the present 
descriptions of physiology. We are but looking at 
the outward machinery of the apparatus, but, what 
the real force is which moves the machinery, is yet to 
be discovered. 

We must discover what the actual form of energy 
is which actuates thought and consciousness, and 
when we shall have discovered this form of energy, 
it must then be learned whether it has such force that 
it can continue its functioning after the brain's dis- 
solution. It is quite possible, if not probable, that 
the energy which is exercised in will and conscious- 
ness is that now known as radio-activity ; that is, the 
action of the will- or consciousness-force, may be elec- 
tric, or expressed in the activity and relations of the 
primal electrons. These as already explained are not 
really matter, as we ordinarily understand it; but a 
much more refined and persistent substance. 

''If matter is made up of an assemblage of elec- 
trons," says Jean Becquerel, "its inertia is entirely 
electro-magnetic. ... I do not wish to go so far as to 

[101] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

say that there is no such thing as matter ; this merely 
signifies that it is not well to depend entirely on ap- 
pearances and that it is necessary to view matter in 
a different light from which it has been viewed in the 
last few years." (Smithsonian Rep., 1911.) 



[102] 



CHAPTER XVII 

Mind and the Electro- Magnetic 
World 

(7) In my ''Psychic Phenomena, Science and Im- 
mortality, ' ' I attempted to show that in all probability 
the function of consciousness and thought was exer- 
cised in the plane of electro-magnetic energy — where 
*'an immaterial emanation of a radiant nature flows 
ceaselessly around the cell centres of the brain, and 
which is the immediate instrumentality of the energy 
of the will. It is the substantial garment of sentiency, 
volition and consciousness. In short, the will-energy, 
which is the central force of personality, or self-con- 
sciousness, is itself radiant substance; that is pure, 
immaterial emanation, radio-active, electrical and all 
penetrating." 

I may be wholly wrong in such a conclusion, which 
I felt called on to make from the physical analysis of 
the substance of the brain cells and the pure plasm of 
the vital substance. But until we know whether con- 
sciousness is of some such nature we cannot possibly 
understand its potential future history. 

At least the present state of the scientific knowledge 
of matter is not such as to warrant any absolute as- 
sertion concerning its ultimate nature and the possi- 
bilities that appertain to its further evolution. Mat- 
ter is now reduced to invisibility and imjnateriality, 
to a substance whose properties are directly contra- 

[103] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

dictory of the well known and historic attributes of 
matter. Matter is indeed reduced to a mere charge 
of electricity, whose unimagined possibilities are just 
beginning to reveal themselves to the apprehension of 
man. 

There is a realm of matter of whose conscious ex- 
perience we are no more capable than is the fish ca- 
pable of the experience of the air; though, contrary 
to the fish that dies if exposed to air and is deprived 
of its native element, the water, mankind is uncon- 
sciously enswathed with a substance in which he 
thrives, yet of which he has no perception. 

It is a probability that the whole realm of the 
psychic activities exists in an element, howbeit sub- 
stantial yet immaterial, of electro-magnetic nature, 
whose properties are almost wholly inappreciable by 
the customary senses. ''Until it is possible," says 
Soddy, "to educate the mind so that it apprehends 
intuitively the three dimensional aspects of motion in 
ether, the electro-magnetic world, which underlies the 
material world, and may completely emhrace it, must 
remain a foreign element as difficult to breathe as air 
is to a fish, by those accustomed to the grosser ideas 
of matter and its motion/^ (Italic type by the 
author.) ("Matter and Energy," Home Univ. Lib. 
edition, p. 182.) 

In short there is a whole new world of existence for 
us to become acquainted with and conscious of, which 
actually embraces us, yet concerning which we shall 
have to be educated as a baby is educated in becoming 
acquainted with this palpable world. And this un- 

[104] 



MIND AND THE ELECTRO-MAGNETIC WORLD 

known, unsuspected, inappreciable and imperceptible 
world, is the actual — the realm of truth and reality. 

It is not metaphysics which is thns speaking, bnt 
rigid science. What the final possibilities of this 
ultimate essence of matter may be no one yet knows. 
As undoubtedly the ultimate quality of living matter 
must be of the super-material above indicated, it is 
futile for us to postulate its final destiny, for we know 
as yet so little about it. It seems to be immaterial and 
indestructible; in that event, as I have shown in my 
''Psychic Phenomena and Immortality," it may be 
susceptible of carrying forward the psychic activities 
of the brain beyond the grave, because it is the dis- 
tinctive element in which those activities are exercised 
in the brain at present. 

Even mechanistic or materialistic philosophers, at 
least of recent date, admit that the energy of thought 
is not like ordinary motion, but embodies some kind 
of electrical change. Says Prof. Hugh Elliot as re- 
ported in Science Progress and reprinted in Truth 
Seeker of May 1st 1915, ''In the nervous impulse, 
something is passed from molecule to molecule. That 
something, which is not motion, indeed ; it appears to 
be some kind of electromotive change; but whatever 
it is, the molecule or other unit of the nerve-substance 
passes it on, and then immediately reverts to its for- 
mer quiescence.*' 

He is here speaking of the nature of thought and 
its process through the nerves and the brain centres. 
Evidently there is some electric element in which the 
energy of thought acts, generating a process that is 
more refined and abstruse than motion in gross mat- 

[106] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

ter. Who shall say then what the final possibilities 
of such an energy may be, insomuch as we are as yet 
so meagerly informed as to its real nature ? 

Science has therefore been compelled to reject the 
crude yet once popular notion that thought is a secre- 
tion of the brain cells, and now admits that it is an 
energy accompanying the cell activity, yet exercised 
in an element foreign to the substance of the cell it- 
self. Thought, apparently, is an electro-magnetic 
impulse — it is accompanied by an electric charge, 
**an electromotive change," which leaps from cell to 
cell or molecule to molecule, like the motion that leaps 
from billiard balls when set in a row, and struck by 
the cue. 

So that while thought may be accepted as a physi- 
cal process, nevertheless it functions in a substance 
so utterly different to ordinary matter that it occupies 
a world of its own. Before science can finally deter- 
mine the destiny and future disposition of the 
thoughts that activate the human brain, she must 
learn whether this action is embodied in the refined 
electrical substance, and whether it passes thus em- 
bodied from the brain and continues to exist as an 
entity or embodiment when free from the physical 
organ of thought. Until this problem is solved, 
science cannot finally determine the possibility of a 
future life that may flow from a self-conscious life 
here. 



[106] 



CHAPTER XVIII 

Psychic Phenomena and Subtle 
Forms of Energy 

(8) The fact just mentioned introduces for our 
consideration the remarkable feats of the mind as 
exhibited in modem psychological experiments as 
weU as spontaneously manifested in human exper- 
ience. What is now popularly known as hypnotism, 
telepathy, thought transmission, etc., must be ex- 
plained and better understood, before their final bear- 
ing on the problem of immortality can be determined. 
If it should prove to be true, as it appears to be, that 
thought and consciousness are exercised in the electro- 
magnetic plane of force (a plane of which as Soddy 
says we are at present almost whoUy unconscious in 
our experience) we cannot determine what finally be- 
comes of the thought-forms, that make up our states 
of consciousness, which is the central principle of 
human personality. 

To illustrate this statement I will at this juncture 
interrupt the argument by introducing some of the 
phenomena to which I refer. The cases given below 
are such only as have been carefully verified by the 
scientific investigators associated with the British So- 
ciety for Psychical Research. None among them was 
more critical, captious or skeptical than Frank Pod- 
more, and the cases I here present are such as he him- 
self personally verified, or had verified by reliable stu- 

[107] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

dents. The first case shows how thought travels from 
mind to mind in the form of a picture or photograph. 

"The narrator is a friend of my own, who had 
read accounts of similar successful experiments pub- 
lished in Phantasms of the Living. The letter, from 
which the following extract is taken, is dated 16th 
November, 1886. 

From the Rev. Clarence Godfrey: 

*' *I was so impressed by the account on p. 105 that 
I determined to put the matter to an experiment. 

'Retiring at 10:45 (on the 15th November, 1886), 
I determined to appear, if possible, to a friend, and 
accordingly I set myself to work with all the voli- 
tional and determinative energy which I possess, to 
stand at the foot of her bed. I need not say that I 
never dropped the slightest hint beforehand as to 
my intention, such as could mar the experiment, nor 
had I mentioned the subject to her. As the 'agent' I 
may describe my own experiences. 

'Undoubtedly the imaginative faculty was brought 
extensively into play, as well as the volitional, for 
I endeavoured to translate myself, spiritually, into 
her room, and to attract her attention, as it were, 
while standing there. My effort was sustained for 
perhaps eight minutes, after which I felt tired, and 
was soon asleep. 

'The next thing I was conscious of was meeting 
the lady next morning (i. e., in a dream, I suppose?) 
and asking her at once if she had seen me last night. 
The reply came, 'Yes.' 'HowT I inquired. Then in 
words strangely clear and low, like a well audible 
whisper, came the answer, 'I was sitting beside you.' 
These words, so clear, awoke me instantly, and I felt 
I must have been dreaming; but on reflection I re- 
membered what I had been 'willing' before I fell 
asleep, and it struck me, ' This must be a reflex action 
from the percipient.' My watch showed 3:40 A. M. 

[108] 



PSYCHIC PHENOMENA OF ENERGY 

The following is what I wrote immediately in pencil, 
standing in my night-dress : ' As I reflected upon those 
clear words, they struck me as being quite intuitive, 
I mean subjective, and to have proceeded from within, 
as my own conviction, rather than a communication 
from any one else. And yet I can't remember her 
face at all, as one can after a vivid dream ! ' 

'But the words were uttered in a clear, quick 
tone, which was most remarkable, and awoke me at 
once. 

'My friend, in the note with which she sent me the 
enclosed account of her own experience, says: 'I 
remember the man put all the lamps out soon after I 
came upstairs, and that is only done about a quarter 
to four.' " 

"Mr. Godfrey received from the percipient on the 
16th November an account of her side of the exper- 
ience, and at his request she wrote as follows : 

" 'Yesterday — viz., the morning of November 16th, 
1886 — about half -past three o 'clock, I woke up with 
a start and an idea that some one had come into the 
room. I heard a curious sound, but fancied it might 
be the birds in the ivy outside. Next I experienced 
a strange restless longing to leave the room and go 
downstairs. This feeling became so overpowering 
that at last I rose and lit a candle, and went down, 
thinking if I could get some soda water it might have 
a quieting effect. On returning to my room I saw 
Mr. Godfrey standing under the large window on the 
staircase. He was dressed in his usual style, and with 
an expression on his face that I have noticed when 
he has been looking very earnestly at anything. He 
stood there, and I held up the candle and gazed at 
him for three or four seconds in utter amazement, 
and then, as I passed up the staircase, he disap- 

[109] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

peared. The impression left on my mind was so vivid 
that I fully intended waking a friend who occupied 
the same room as myself, but remembering that I 
should only be laughed at as romantic and imagina- 
tive, refrained from doing so. 

'I was not frightened at the appearance of Mr. 
Godfrey, but felt much excited, and could not sleep 
afterwards.' " 

*'0n the 21st of the same month I heard a full 
account of the incident given above from Mr. God- 
frey, and on the day following from Mrs. . 



Mrs. : — told me that the figure appeared quite 

distinct and lifelike at first, though she could not 
remember to have noticed more than the upper part 
of the body. As she looked, it grew more and more 

shadowy, and finally faded away. Mrs. , it 

should be added, told me that she had previously 
seen two phantasmal figures representing a parent 
whom she had recently lost." (Podmore's "Studies 
in Psychical Research," pp. 249-251.) 

The above case illustrates how by conscious effort a 
thought form may be projected from one mind to 
another. But here follows a case of spontaneous 
projection of which there is no conscious projector, 
and the whole experience is purely subjective. Pod- 
more, introducing the subject, says: 

''We may now pass to the consideration of spon- 
taneous telepathic hallucinations. In the first case to 
be quoted it is difficult to know whether to class the 
percipient's vision as an illusion or a hallucination. 
At any rate, it seems to have been exceptional if not 
actually unique in his experience. 

[HO] 



PSYCHIC PHENOMENA OF ENERGY 

From Prince Victor Duleep Singh. 

''Highclere Castle," Newbury, Nov. 8, 1894 

" 'On Saturday, October 21, 1893, I was in Berlin 
with Lord Carnarvon. We went to a theatre together 
and returned before midnight. I went to bed, leaving, 
as I always do, a bright light in the room (electric 
light) . As I lay in bed I found myself looking at an 
oleograph which hung on the wall opposite my bed. 
I saw distinctly the face of my father, the Maharajah 
Duleep Singh, looking at me, as it were out of this 
picture ; not like a portrait of him, but his real head. 
The head about filled the picture frame. I continued 
looking and still saw my father looking at me with an 
intent expression. Though not in the least alarmed, I 
was so puzzled that I got out of bed to see what the 
picture really was. It was an oleograph commonplace 
picture of a girl holding a rose and leaning out of a 
balcony, an arch forming a background. The girl's 
face was quite small, whereas my father's head was 
the size of life and filled the frame. 

'I was in no special anxiety about my father at 
the time, and had for some years known him to be 
seriously out of health; but there had been no news 
to alarm me about him. 

'Next morning (Sunday) I told the incident to 
Lord Carnarvon. 

*That evening (Sunday), late, on returning 
home. Lord Carnarvon brought two telegrams into my 
room and handed them to me. I said at once, 'My 
father is dead.' That was the fact. He had had an 
apoplectic seizure on the Saturday evening at about 
nine o'clock, from which he never recovered, but 
continued unconscious and died on the Sunday, early 
in the afternoon. My father had often said to me that 
if I was not with him when he died he would try and 
come to me. 

'I am not subject to hallucinations, and have 
only once had any similar experience, when, as a 

[111] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

schoolboy, I fancied I saw the figure of a dead school- 
boy who died in the room which I slept in with my 
brother; but I attached no importance to this. 

Victor Duleep Singh.' " 

Podmore continues: 

"In the next case we seem to have one of those 
completely externalised apparitions which cheat the 
senses by a lifelike counterfeit of the human figure. 
The percipient's own account of the vision, it will be 
seen, is corroborated by an entry in a diary made 
within 24 hours of the occurrence. That the entry 
was not made until the fact of the death was known 
is of course to be regretted, but it can hardly be con- 
tended that this circumstance detracts materially 
from its evidential value. 

From Miss Berta Hurly. 

' "Waterbeach Vicarage," Cambridge, Feb., 1890 

' ' ' In the spring and summer of 1886 I often visited 
a poor woman called Evans, who lived in our parish, 
Caynham. She was very ill with a painful disease, 
and it was, as she said, a great pleasure when I went 
to see her; and I frequently sat with her and read to 
her. Towards the middle of October she was evi- 
dently growing weaker, but there seemed no imme- 
diate danger. I had not called on her for several 
days, and one evening I was standing in the dining- 
room after dinner with the rest of the family, when 
I saw the figure of a woman dressed like Mrs. Evans, 
in large apron and muslin cap, pass across the room 
from one door to the other, where she disappeared. 
I said, 'Who is that?' My mother said, 'What do you 
mean?' and I said, 'That woman who has just come 
in and walked over to the other door.' They all 

[112] 



PSYCHIC PHENOMENA OF ENERGY 

laughed at me, and said I was dreaming, tut I felt 
sure it was Mrs. Evans, and next morning we heard 
she was dead. 

Berta Hurly.' " 

Miss Hurly 's mother writes: 

^' *0n referring to my diary for the month of Oc- 
tober, 1886, I find the following entry : '19th. Berta 
startled us all after dinner, about 8.30 last evening, by 
saying she saw the figure of a woman pass across the 
dining-room, and that it was Mrs. Evans. This morn- 
ing we heard the poor woman is dead. ' On inquiring 
at the cottage we found she had become wandering in 
her mind, and at times unconscious, about the time 
she appeared to Berta, and died towards morning. 

Annie Ross.' " 

''February 25, 1890." (Idem pp. 252-255.) 

This was the projection of a thought image or 
form from the expired mind of a deceased person. In 
both cases naturally the transmission of thought oc- 
curred within a plane of matter of which we are at 
present wholly ignorant, yet undoubtedly it is not so 
mysterious as to be undiscoverable and not to be 
finally apprehended by the human understanding. 

It is commonly argued that whatever hypnotism 
and telepathy, or apparitions and hallucinations may 
be, they are activities of some form of matter, they 
are material forces, and being such they are subject 
to the common laws of matter, which prophesy ulti- 
mate decay and death. For the moment, disregarding 
the scientific certainty that even matter itself knows 
nothing of ultimate and complete death, yet is it not 
true that, even though telepathy be the expression 
of a material force, it may be functioning in a plane 

[113] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

that is beyond the conscious experience of the present 
capacity of man ? If these phenomena are functional 
manifestations of the electro-magnetic plane of mat- 
ter, as has been said, it is a plane of which as yet we 
can have no conscious experience, any more than a 
fish can have of air; how then can we postulate any- 
thing as to the final fate or destiny of activities that 
operate in such a plane ? 

Just as we have discovered that radio-active energy 
reveals in Nature forces and possibilities which are 
absolutely contradictory of all the commonly recog- 
nized properties of matter, so we discovered in the 
psychological realm that the forces exercised or ex- 
hibited in thought transmission and hj^notism, are 
possessed of attributes exactly contradictory of those 
with which we associate ordinary mental activity. 

In chemistry and physics investigators and scien- 
tific philosophers have been compelled totally to re- 
vise and restate even fundamental principles, be- 
cause of the discovery of radium and radio-activity 
in Nature (some going so far as to assert all the books 
written on physics, thermo-dynamics and chemistry 
must be destroyed and new text books written) ; and, 
likewise in psychology- and mental philosophy recent 
discoveries of unexpected powers of the human mind 
have compelled a complete re-statement of the pos- 
sibilities of human nature and conduct. 

The outcome of the new discovery in physics has 
been the practical declaration of the immortality of 
matter, both inert and living matter, not as we sen- 
sibly know it, but as electrical or electro-magnetic, 
originating in the free unit of electricity — the elec- 

[U4] 



PSYCHIC PHENOMENA OF ENERGY 

tron, whose miraculous powers and possibilities man 
is just beginning to recognize. 

Not only has it compelled the recognition of the 
immortality of the primary substance of matter, but 
even of the universe and solar system as well. The 
process of the Cosmos, as has already been said, is one 
of cyclic births, deaths and resurrections. In the 
work of Soddy to which I have referred he declares : 

''Until this modem discovery physicists and astrono- 
mers were forced to the conclusion that the earth and 
solar system were in process of final conflagration, 
but now, we are compelled to think that a construc- 
tive influence is at work opposing this process, and 
the whole system may turn out to be a constructive 
one, limited with respect neither to the future nor to 
the past, but proceeding through continuous cycles of 
evolution. ' ' 

In short what we have heretofore construed as an 
essential and absolute attribute of all forms of mat- 
ter, namely dissolution and ultimate death, is now 
denied as a fact in Nature and what is everywhere 
discerned is the perpetual energy of life and resur- 
rection. Death, indeed, as well as dissolution, there 
is; but they are merely the passing of the outward 
form or phenomena, whereas the substance, the ulti- 
mate units of which they are composed, these are 
eternal, indestructible, immortal. But not even the 
forms themselves can be said to be destroyed for, 
while the individual units of which the forms are 
composed do indeed dissolve and disappear, the forms 
or matrixes in which they manifest themselves con- 
tinue perpetual and unmodified. 

Is it not so, too, in the psychological world ? Have 

[115] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

we not here, too, discovered a totally new plane of 
functioning, the electro-magnetic, as in objective 
matter we have discovered the radio-active. And as 
this electro-magnetic plane of mind is really also radio- 
active in its functional attributes, that is, exhibiting 
thought and consciousness as attributes of radio- 
active energy, how dare we at present assert any- 
thing final and absolute as to the possible continuity 
and perpetuation of the personalities which consist 
of these forces. 

We find similar contradictions of ordinary ex- 
perience in the two planes which we are considering, 
the radio-active and the electro-magnetic. In the 
former matter, which is ordinarily opaque, becomes 
transparent; that is, radio-active rays penetrate mat- 
ter and permit the human eye to follow the new light. 
With the X ray any object can be seen through an 
opaque surface. 

So in the electro-magnetic plane the common eye 
can see through matter, and enjoys a vision that is 
utterly unknown to ordinary experience. Space and 
time as we commonly experience them are actually 
abolished in the experience of these two planes of 
Nature. The radio-active energy is of such veloc- 
ity, some of its rays almost equalling the velocity of 
light, that could consciousness pursue it, space would 
be annihilated. Likewise in the hypnotic and tele- 
pathic experience now discovered to be human pos- 
sibilities, space is utterly disregarded and time 
forgotten. Many other similar characteristics are 
discerned, showing that the natural laws which prevail 
in the two planes are identical. 

[116] 



PSYCHIC PHENOMENA OF ENERGY 

This would seem to indicate that as we have been 
compelled to revise our understanding of the fun- 
damental principles in one plane we shall also be 
compelled to do so concerning the other. And, as in 
the realm of psychology it is now probably discovered 
that the very substance in which thought and con- 
sciousness are exercised lies in the electro-magnetic 
and the radio-active plane, the deduction seems at 
least justified, when we say that as yet we know of 
no laws in Nature that would destroy the possibility 
of these mental functions, or human personality, con- 
tinuing to function after the outward or visible form 
of matter in which they heretofore expressed them- 
selves has been dissolved. At least it would seem 
that science is not at present justified in denying the 
possibility ; and a decidedly qualifying reason is that 
we do not really yet know what death, even of the 
forms of organic and inorganic matter, is. We are 
as yet totally ignorant of the nature not only of life 
but of death. We do not know when life begins or 
ends, when death begins and life ends. 



[117] 



CHAPTER XIX 

The Mystery of Death 

(9) DEATH! How can we know it when we 
have never experienced it? We have indeed ob- 
served it; but never known it. Death is not an im- 
mediate but a slow process, the entire body not dying 
at once, but only cell by cell. 

If a tree is felled we think we have killed it; yet 
it may live for many months and even bear fruit 
(the life stiU expressing itself) another season. 

When an animal organism is killed the same experi- 
ence follows. A chicken will run with its head off, 
showing some life still inheres in the remnant of the 
body that is left. A human being may be paralysed 
in almost vital parts of the body and still show some 
life; and of course we know of many cases where 
death is supposed to have set in where an error caused 
the body to be buried while still alive. The brain 
cells — ^the cells of consciousness — seem to be the last 
that die in a human organism. 

But at what moment death actually is complete — 
even when the entire body is outwardly dead, no one 
seems to know. Says Sir Benjamin Ward Richardson, 
in ''The Ministry of Health" (p. 154-5)' "We are at 
this moment ignorant of the time when vitality ceases 
to act upon matter that has been vitalized. Presuming 
that an organism can be arrested in its living in such 

^ See also "Death: Its Causes and Phenomena," by Oarrington and 

Header. 

[118] 



THE MYSTERY OF DEATH 

maimer that its parts shall not be injured to the 
extent of actual destruction of tissue, or change of 
organic form, the vital wave seems ever ready to pour 
into the body again so soon as the conditions for its 
action are re-established. Then in some of my experi- 
ments for suspending the conditions essential for the 
visible manifestation of life in cold blooded animals, 
I have succeeded in re-establishing the condition 
under which the vital vibrations will influence, after 
a lapse not of hours, but of days; and for my part 
I know of no limitation to such re-manifestations 
except from simple ignorance of us who inquire into 
the subject.'' 

In the successful experiments of Dr. Carol we have 
even the greater exhibition of the continuity of life 
after the dismemberment of the individual vital parts 
of a living body. The different vital organs of a eat 
were actually separated from the body and yet they 
continued to live and function; the cat as a cat was 
as dead as it could be ; for the form and organic unity 
of it were utterly destroyed, yet the really vital parts 
of the cat continued to live and act as though they 
were still functioning co-ordinately within the cat's 
organism. In this case it would indeed be difficult to 
tell when the cat enters into the process of organic 
death. When such puzzling problems are presenting 
themselves to the genius of modem biologists it 
seems indeed unreasonable to become dogmatic in a 
field of truth where as yet so little is known. 

(10) How can we possibly be positive or assured 
concerning the issues of an event, whose occurrence 
leads we cannot say where? Who can possibly tell 

[119] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

what transpires in the moment of death ; what 
psychological, biological, chemical or other transfor- 
mations take place, who shall say? 

Knowing so little about it how can we rationally 
declare anything final concerning its future? ''But 
Death?" exclaims Prof. Joseph Le Conte, **Can we 
detect anjrthing returned to the forces of Nature by 
simple death? What is the difference in Nature be- 
tween the living organism and the dead organism? 
What is the nature of the difference expressed in 
the formulae of material science? What is it that 
has gone, and what has not gone? There is some- 
thing here which science cannot understand.'' 

Had Dr. Le Conte said there is something here 
which science cannot yet understand he would have 
told the truth in his day ; but that science shall some 
day understand it, all who have faith in man's in- 
finite patience and research must believe. 

In fact recent discoveries have permitted us to 
believe that we may now be on the trail of what has 
gone and not gone ; and we may find the remnant in 
the plane of the radio-active element which is already 
revealing such undreamed of possibilities to the eye 
of science in the phenomena of Nature, and may 
prove to be the very secret relative to both life and 
death which has so long sustained the defiance of 
mystery. 

If, for instance, as I shall attempt to show, in the 
following section of this work, it should be demon- 
strated that most refined emanations or gasses have 
been emitted from material substances in solution, 
and those emanations, when existing in the free ether 

[120] 



THE MYSTERY OP DEATH 

and coming in contact with other elements, construct 
for themselves, so to speak, new bodies, howbeit in- 
visible, in which they continue to live and thrive for 
days, and weeks and months, and even years, would 
it not afford, at least, a suggestion of the possibilities 
of what might take place in the electro-magnetic or 
radio-active element that may escape from the human 
body in the process of death, and permit it to func- 
tion in another plane of existence ? * 

If radium in solution actually can give forth such 
a marvellous emanation which is capable of perform- 
ing such dramatic contradictions of the entire history 
of what is known as matter, why should we conceive 
it to be beyond possibility that the ultimate vital sub- 
stance, which enters into the mysterious formation 
of a living organism, may be endued with equally 
marvellous and transforming powers as the emana- 
tion of radium. 

In the latter case of course the suggestive differ- 
ence would be that whatever element it may be that 
remains after the death of the human body it would 
be surcharged with the intelligence of the human 
brain, whereas the emanation of radium would be 
merely inert and undirected by personal conscious- 
ness. Of course I am not advancing this opinion as 
a proof of the existence of the after life of man. I 
am simply asserting that so long as such a possibility 
is suggested by an analogous fact in Nature the event 
itself is not beyond reason and therefore cannot be 
absolutely denied as a possibility by rational science. 

So long as such ignorance concerning the reality 
of life and death still exists science must at least 

[121] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

maintain a silent dignity and await further dis- 
covery. So long as it is true, as Prof. Bateson said in 
his address before the British Ass'n for the Advance- 
ment of Science, that "Of the physics and chemistry 
of life we know next to nothing," it is well that 
science remain cautious and undogmatic. "Some- 
how" he says, "the characters of living things are 
bound up in properties of colloids, and are largely 
determined by the chemical powers of the enzymes, 
but the study of this class of matter has only just 
begun. Living things are found by experiment to 
have powers undreamt of, and who knows what is 
behind them ?' ' ( On " Heredity. " ) 

Now, I am not insisting that because of this ig- 
norance science must assume that ignorance will con- 
tinue and therefore the teleogical attitude of theology 
should be accepted as the best and noblest state of 
mind. I am merely insisting that in the present state 
of scientific ignorance concerning such potent funda- 
mental principles and possibilities the hour has not 
yet arrived when science can justly make a positive 
denial of the nature of potential life after the death 
of the human body. 



[122] 



BOOK II 



Scientific Limitations 
of Reason 



CHAPTER XX 

Summary and Investigation of 
Scientific Negations 

Having now compassed a considerable ground in 
our survey of the negative attitude of science toward 
tlie problem of immortality, let us recapitulate and 
review the arguments, setting them forth in numer- 
ical order. 

(1) It is necessary that we distinguish carefully 
between the scientific attitude and the attitude of 
* 'faith/' By the one method we arrive at general 
principles deduced from a summary of facts; by the 
other we accept general principles, as axiomatic or 
proposed, and seek facts to establish or corroborate 
them. 

Mere axiomatic assumption of what is unsuscep- 
tible of demonstration is not scientific; and the as- 
sumption of what is to be proved must be only tenta- 
tively held as an hypothesis to be rejected at once 
when found fallacious. 

In scientific research there is but one standard by 
which to judge facts and principles; that standard 
is a sincere desire for the truth, regardless of pre- 
dilection or tradition. There is danger both in science 
and in philosophy that we be misled by traditional 
disposition or predilection in favor of a desired hypo- 
thesis. 

(2) The mere disproof of an alleged principle or 

[125] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

doctrine assumed to be true, is not in itself a disproof 
of an actual fact that may exist although for the time 
being undiscovered. 

When Columbus sought a Trestern rout^ to India, 
although sophists and scholastics may have actually 
proved by mathematical and geographical demon- 
stration that his theory was utterly false, that, how- 
ever successful as an abstract, demonstrated proposi- 
tion, would not disprove the actual fact of such a 
western passage. So is it with the problem of im- 
mortality. 

We must not conclude that science has disproved 
the potential fact of immortality because it has suc- 
cessfully overthrown and disproved many doctrines, 
theories and propositions of faith relating to it. 

If all these had been shown to be false or fallacious, 
that accomplishment in itself would not actually 
prove that existence after death is not a fact in Na- 
ture. In this section we considered only the question 
whether science has disproved the fad, not merely 
some theory or a doctrine relating to the potential 
fact. 

(3) Proving that whatever the soul may be it 
cannot have other than a physical nature does not 
in itself establish the impossibility of its after ex- 
istence. 

Accepting even Haeckel's definition that the soul 
is not an independent, immaterial substance, but 
merely the collective title of the sum-total of man's 
psychic capacities, does not demonstrate the impos- 
sibility of the continuity of the existence of such 

[126] 



SUMMARY OF SCIENTIFIC NEGATIONS 

capacities after death ; for the reason that it is demon- 
strable that Nature actually thinks, or conducts a 
rational series of processes in her phenomena, and 
that the brain of man is itself a temporary and 
adaptable instrumentality for the thinking process 
of Nature to express itself through. 

The soul may indeed be physical and material, yet 
it may consist of such refined material substance, as 
to possess attributes utterly contradictory of the 
property of gross or ordinary matter. 

An analysis of universal matter does actually dis- 
close the fact that the primary units of which mani- 
fest matter is composed are, indeed, immaterial in 
the sense that is ordinarily understood. For the 
substance exists in a plane where ordinary matter 
cannot possibly function. 

Science is now forced to speak of immaterial, im- 
ponderable, invisible and insubstantial matter — a 
contradictory expression, apparently, at least para- 
doxical, yet which the recent discoveries in laboratory 
experiment actually compel. 

Therefore Haeckel is correct in asserting that the 
soul is not immaterial and independent, if he uses 
these terms in the ordinary sense ; but if he uses them 
in the sense in which physicists now speak of the 
ultimate units of matter he would be wrong. 

Interpreted in that view the substance in which the 
psychic faculties functionate may really be imma- 
terial, invisible, independent and insubstantial. In 
fact science can as yet speak with no very clear lan- 
guage in her description of this form of matter, for 

[127] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

the discovery is so recent and so startling that a 
new nomenclature is called for. ^ 

(4) As we are forced to reinterpret our under- 
standing of ultimate or refined matter, so we are 
forced to reinterpret the nature of thought and the 
agency through which it acts. 

When the luminiferous waves of ether were dis- 
covered to enable scientists to explain the nature of 
light it created not only a sensation but a new science. 
So the recent discovery that thought energy is not a 
mysterious, occult and supernatural process in the 
human brain, an expression of vague and incompre- 
hensible spirit, but is like all other expressions of 
energy in Nature a mode of motion (or etheric waves 
that correlate with the functions of mind) has com- 
pelled a new psychology and a new interpretation of 
life. 

That thought is a mode of motion is demonstrated 
(a) by the nature and organization of the nervous 
system and the cranial cells, which are so made as to 

i"When we leave the realm of matter and attempt to penetrate 
into that of electricity and the ether, thp highest intellect feels 
the need of models and the impossibility of obtaining even 
the raw uufluished material out of which to construct them. 
It is as if we were in a world destitute of simple wood and 
brass and nails, but elaborate, furnished with all sorts of ex- 
tremely complicated constructions which baffle our ingenuity to 
pull to pieces. Our most fundamental conceptions are like our- 
selves, material. The elaboration of them is easy, but their 
simplification to suit the immaterial world, whither we now wish 
to embark, is difficult almost to impossibility. If our minds 
habitually thought in terms of electricity and magnetism, in- 
stead of terms of matter and motion, what a world would be 
opened!" (Soddy's "Matter and Energy," Home Library ed. 
p. 164-5.) (Boldface type by the author.) 

Again: "Is the unexplained inertia of matter a different thing from 
the elucidated inertia of electricity, or is it possible that the 
inertia of matter is due to the same phenomena as that of 
electricity, and that matter is in some unknown way com- 
pounded out of electrons?" (Idem p. 177.) (Boldface type 
by the author.) 

[128] 



SUMMARY OF SCIENTIFIC NEGATIONS 

make them susceptible not to the transference of 
anything material (like blood which is conveyed in 
the veins) but only to the carrying of vibrations which 
pass into and out from the nervous organism in order 
to bring man in contact with the other world. 

Again (b) thought has been shown, in all prob- 
ability, to be incorporated in a process of nerve or 
brain waves by the alleged fact of the photography 
of the process. While thought photography cannot 
yet be accepted as a demonstrated scientific fact, 
nevertheless there have been certain tentatively suc- 
cessful efforts which would seem to demonstrate the 
possibility as worthy of continued experiment and 
study. 

The most respectable recognition which thought 
photography has yet received in scientific circles is 
the results of Commandant Darget's efforts which 
have received the seal of the Academy of Science in 
France as genuine and truthful. 

If thought is incorporated in a process of wave- 
motion, then it must operate in a form of substance 
that is at least as refined as are the ether waves of 
light. The bearing of this fact on the possibility 
of after life is so important that until the problem 
is solved science cannot safely asseverate anything 
positive relative to future existence. 

(5) For if it be true that thought and the psychic 
activities functionate in an imponderable, insubstan- 
tial, immaterial and permanent element, then it must 
be learned whether the customary thoughts, that is 
the self -consciousness of the individual, can so impress 

[129] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

this potential substance as to perpetuate its organized 
existence beyond the grave. 

If the consciousness of man abides in this sub- 
stance, whose properties are utterly contradictory of 
the properties of gross matter, then just as the mental 
forces can in dreams temporarily create extemporized 
personalities, may not the same powers have the 
capacity of maintaining genuine personalities after 
death of the gross body ? 

If consciousness or organized personality is a 
force, and impresses its purposes and volitions upon 
the element which we are contemplating, and if it 
shapes that element within the present organism 'by 
reason of its negative force, then may it not he pos- 
sible that this same consciousness may have the power 
of continuing so to hold together the sufficieiit units 
of this ultimate substance as to maintain a matrix for 
the manifestation of itself in another sphere? 
I do not here argue that it is so. I merely contend 
that as we are confronted by the marvellous sub- 
stance of which as yet we know so little, and as we 
are learning that this substance is the immediate 
residence of the psychic faculties, or as called by 
some the soul — then science is as yet in no position 
to declare the positive impossibility of its after exis- 
tence. 

On the contrary judged by the possibilities of con- 
sciousness operating on a plastic, invisible, unweigh- 
able, and permanent substance, the probability of 
after existence, precisely because of the existence of 
a substance that would be an accommodating medium 
for such psychic state, seems to be emphasized. 
[130] 



SUMMARY OF SCIENTIFIC NEGATIONS 

(6) It is ar^ed that because a personal soul has 
a beginning in time it cannot therefore have a per- 
petual existence hereafter. The supposition is based 
on the theory that whatever begins in time must also 
end in time. This is true according to ordinary ob- 
servation. But while we see that things which have 
a beginning before our eyes seem also to reach an 
ending; we learn on more careful consideration that 
the law is not true as stated, for there are beginnings 
without endings. 

(a) The motion of any object while at rest begins 
by the application of an external impulse, yet the 
perpetual continuity of that motion is a recognized 
fact in natural philosophy, although the resultant ex- 
citants of the motion are beyond sensible observation. 
For the impetus with which we impel an object does 
not end when the apparent movement of the object 
ceases. 

By the well known law of the transmutation of 
energy, some of the motion goes out in heat through 
friction and the remainder moves on producing waves 
in the ether, like a pebble thrown into a pond. 

The ending of the energy generated by the move- 
ment of a stone, or even so slight a motion as the 
kick of a fly or the winking of the eye, cannot be con- 
ceived in Nature. Many other illustrations might be 
given. 

Again (b) if we study the germ plasm of Weis- 
mann, we discover here a substance which has a decided 
beginning in time, yet which is declared to have an 
endless existence, if its natural life is not interrupted 
by accident or otherwise. But its essential element 
[131] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

is inherently immortal. Thus again we see a decided 
exception to Haeckel's alleged law. However, 

(7) We must recall that when we treat of the 
soul, we are to regard it as Haeckel and other mechan- 
istic biologists define it, namely but a title for the 
sum-total of human psychic capacities, and then it 
would seem that it must essentially sometime find 
an ending. When, nevertheless, we contemplate the 
element in which the psychic capacities functionate, 
then we discover an element which in itself seems es- 
sentially perpetual or immortal. 

Weismann assures us (and while the doctrine is 
disputed by some biologists, it is now accepted by the 
majority) that the germ plasm, or vital substance of 
the cell, is deathless in Nature; therefore, as the 
psychic faculties operate in this element we see at 
once (this medium being essentially deathless) that 
the psychic energy may go on operating forever 
through such a deathless agency. 

But if it is argued that the plasm itself exists 
only on this planet, and when the body expires it 
must go down in a stream of life to other planetary 
organism, or lose its physical existence, we of course 
admit it, but thereupon in addition learn, that while 
the physical plasm may expire, except as it descends 
through other physical living organism, yet the ab- 
solute plane in which thought, or the psychic facul- 
ties operate, is apparently not material, but super- 
material or insubstantial. We must therefore tra- 
verse the possibilities of such a plane of existence. 

We learn that this plane is of electro-magnetic and 
radio-active nature; that it is possessed of attributes 

[132] 



SUMMARY OF SCIENTIFIC NEGATIONS 

which are wholly contradictory of all forms of ma- 
terial or gross matter, and among these attributes is 
that of perpetuity or self-generating quality. This 
is a wholly new field of physical investigation, and 
science does not seem justified to render any final 
negative decision as to the possible future history of 
the psychic powers until it knows more about the 
possibilities of such a plane of Nature. There is a 
plane of matter now known to science called by 
Crookes the *' fourth dimension of space*' (or 
''fourth state of matter'') where nothing remains of 
the known properties of matter, except inertia, that 
is, a moving charge of electricity. This moving 
charge is the electron, which is the unit or ''founda- 
tion stone" of all phases of manifest phenomena in 
Nature. This electron has the property of what is 
called the self-induction of inertia, that is, the ability 
of pulling itself along through the ether and thus 
generating a dynamic force. 

"Only the electron exists; it is the unit of elec- 
tricity" (Crookes). But even the field of the elec- 
tron is not, as far as science can see through "the 
use of the scientific imagination," the beginning of 
matter; for the electron itself, which is a free unit 
of electricity, has had "elsewhere its setting and 
Cometh from afar." Crookes saw in 1886 that there 
must be some primary substance or element from 
which all forms of matter are generated, and he called 
it "protyle," meaning something "earlier than the 
stuff of which matter is made." * 

*0n this point Le Bon says: 

"If the views set forth in this paper are correct, there exist four 

[133] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

So long as this unfrequented plane of Nature exists, 
how can we be positive of what may transpire therein 
so far as mortal man is concerned after he has shuffled 
off this coil of clay? 

Suppose a thought is a form of energy that can 
gather together a congeries of electrons ; that is, sup- 
pose the thought organizes electrons, and these charge 
the cells and nerves of the human organism, as a cur- 
rent of electricity charges a battery or moves along 
electric wires ; then suppose that these psychic organ- 
izations of electrons constitute the personality or con- 
sciousness of a human being. 

You have then an electrical orgamzation, energized 
wholly hy psychic consciousness, whose existence is 
distinguishable from the material organization that 
surrounds it. Now as this organization of electrons 
consists of indestrucibtle units, purely electrical, its 
properties would be entirely different from those of 
the material body, and would be essentially immortal. 
At least it seems palpable that until we are better ac- 
quainted with this curious realm of natural activi- 
ties, and know more of the medium through which 

successive forms of matter. Two are known to us by ex- 
perience; the first and the last are as yet hjrpothetical. 

The first form is that exhibited by ether. 

The second, that of ordinary matter, formed of atoms, which are 
according to our view, only condensed energy in a special state, 
from which result form, weight, fixity. 

The third form, with which dissolution commences, is represented 
by the so-called electric atom (electron), a substance inter- 
mediate between ordinary matter and the ether — that is 
to say, between ponderable and the imponderable. The matter 
has lost its weight, its inertia is no longer constant, and its 
fixity seems to be transitory. , , . , ., 

The last phase of existence of matter would be that in which the 
electric atom (electron) having lost its individuality, that is 
to say, its fixity, disappears in ether. This would be the final 
term of the dissociation of matter, the final nirvana, into which 
it seems that everything must return afer an ephemeral ex- 
istence. (Le Bon, Revue Scientifique, 4th series, vol, XX, nos. 
16, 18, also Smithsonian Report 1903, p. 291.) 

[134] 



SUMMARY OF SCIENTIFIC NEGATIONS 

psychic powers and the personal consciousness func- 
tion in that plane, we are not justified in postulating 
anything final as to the ultimate fate of the aggregate 
psychic faculties of man or the human soul. 

In 1809 Sir Humphrey Davy, contemplating the 
possible discoveries that science might make in such 
a realm of Nature as we see she has now penetrated, 
exclaimed: "If such generalizations should be sup- 
ported by facts a new, a simple and a grand philoso- 
phy would be the result. ' ' And Sir William Crookes, 
in his famous address before the Congress of Applied 
Chemistry in Berlin, 1903, ventured to say: ''We 
have assuredly touched the border land where matter 
and force seem to merge into one another — that 
shadowy realm between the known and the unknown. 
I venture to think that the greatest scientific prob- 
lems of the future will find their solution in this border 
land, and even beyond; here, it seems to me, lie ulti- 
mate realities, subtle, far-reaching, wonderful." 

It is because of this newly discovered shadowy realm 
?nd the possible problems which science will soon solve 
there, that makes me feel confident she is not yet 
sufficiently equipped to justify her in making a final 
negative declaration relative to the possible future 
existence of human beings. 

(8) Ostwald, the eminent chemist of Europe has 
raised the objection that ''we can conceive of a uni- 
versal catastrophe which would annihilate all the 
descendants of the first cell or cells." Hence he 
argues that would make impossible the realization of 
that immortality to which man aspires. 

If, however, the primary cells were detroyed in a 
universal cataclysm, that event would not expunge 

[135] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

the ultimate essence of which they consisted ; and the 
fact that Nature was itself inherently possessed of 
the ability once to generate the vital units would en- 
able her to re-enact the same drama, and thus prove 
that life as a permanent principle in Nature cannot 
be denied. Science seems to prove that all matter is 
essentially qualified with life, and the absolute de- 
struction of this vital principle or **biotic energy" 
would appear to be an impossible event in Nature. 

(9) Another objection presented by Ostwald in 
his IngersoU lecture which has not been noticed in 
the previous pages is as follows : 

**If a man survives his body the continuity of the 
existence is broken by death, and if he is possessed 
of immortality of some kind, it can only be of a par- 
tial nature. ' ' 

In one sense it might be said that this statement 
begs the question; for the very problem is whether 
continuity of existence is actually broken by death. 
But it may easily be shown that, supposing after- 
death-existence a possibility, death no more breaks 
the continuity than the nightly sleep breaks the con- 
tinuity of our earthly lives. When we enter sleep 
we have become either totally oblivious of our exis- 
tence or we have created a wholly new world for our- 
selves in the realm of dreams. We are no longer 
ourselves as we daily know ourselves to be in our 
waking state. 

This certainly is a break as distinct as death itself 
could be, provided we live on. Yet we know that the 
continuity of consciousness is not at all broken by 
sleep or the intervention of a dream-world in our 

[136] 



SUMMARY OF SCIENTIFIC NEGATIONS 

experience. Though we may have been the king of 
England in our sleep, or some great sea captain con- 
quering foes with matchless prowess, when we awake 
we again recognize ourselves in the humble charac- 
ters to which we have been aUoted. 

This same proof of the actual continuity of con- 
sciousness of individual life is even more positively 
or empirically proved in the experiment of hypno- 
tism. In that state not only is the personal conscious- 
ness completely lost but it may be transformed into 
any number of changing consciousnesses or person- 
alities. Yet when the subject is restored, at once, at 
the will of the operator, he returns to his normal con- 
sciousness. There has been no actual break in the 
continuity of the self-existence, though outwardly 
there seemed to transpire a positive and serious break. 
Therefore Ostwald's objection plainly falls to the 
ground when mustered to oppose the possibility of 
the after life, for our present experience belies the 
very result he contemplates. 

(10) HaeckePs objection to the fact of physical 
immortality in the germ plasm as advocated by 
Weismann, and therefore an illustrative proof of the 
non-existence of an immortal life beyond, is that when 
the cell propagates it does so by fission, and thereby 
the original cell is itself destroyed. Immortality to 
the eell itself, he argues, is therefore impossible. 

As shown in the previous pages this is a very poor 
argument for the fact is that in fission the original 
«ell itself remains, merely dividing itself into two 
parts, each of which is fully equipped with all the 
capacities of the original cell, which gives off only a 
[137] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

part of itself but continues to live its own life. No 
more has the original cell disappeared than a human 
parent disappears when propagating, by departing 
with a portion of its vital essence. The original cell, 
fully capacitated for all the offices of the cell life, 
lives on forever, merely sloughing off a half of it- 
self, but in no wise limiting its complete nature as a 
living cell. 

(11) Because there is no acceptable or absolute 
proof that any one of all the countless millions of 
human beings who have departed from this earth has 
ever returned in spirit form to communicate with 
those who still live on this planet, it is argued we 
have sufficient proof of the fact that none of them live 
on hereafter. Naturally until we know whether there 
is a communicating medium between the two worlds, 
whether, in other words, the beings that have gone 
beyond are empowered with the capacity to return 
to or communicate with this realm of existence, we 
cannot decide that they do not yet live because we do 
not hear from them. 

The burden of the argument would be on the ob- 
jector. He must first show that such an intercom- 
munication is a possibility; that there actually exists 
a medium or instrumentality which the spirits of those 
who have gone beyond might utilize if they choose to. 
But as there is no indisputable proof of the exis- 
tence of such a medium or the possibility of such an 
intercommunication, naturally the fact that they do 
not so communicate is no disproof of their possible 
existence. • ' ^Tm^^^^ 

(12) Because of so many dead worlds in the 

[138] 



SUMMARY OF SCIENTIFIC NEGATIONS 

vacuous distances of space, where Astronomy seems 
to indicate the birth and death of suns and stars and 
planets, it has been asserted that nothing but man's 
own egotism could ever have given him the temerity 
to assume his indestructible existence forever in 
realms beyond. 

This argument fails at once in the light of the 
discoveries of modern physics. For now it is learned 
that the supposed complete and absolute death of 
worlds and planets is probably a myth; that in the 
first place, probably only such worlds have perished 
as have met with concussions or accidents, and that 
in the second place, the assumption that worlds must 
die as they gradually lose the benefit of solar radia- 
tion on which they depend for their existence, is now 
also shown to be untenable. The planets and stars 
are now known to have self-resuscitating energy 
within their own composition which gives forth suffi- 
cient heat for their sustenance for countless millions 
of years even though the sun's radiation ceased en- 
tirely. ' 

(13) Because evolution has traced man's descent 
from the lower animals without a break, and that the 
difference is but one of degree but not of kind, it is 

'"It is now possible to renew the discussion .... whether or not 
the universe is losing its available energy and is going steadily 
to a condition of rest and extinction; whether or not the uni- 
verse is a clock running down. 

Only yesterday, practically, the affirmative side of this question 
seemed to be one of the safest and surest conclusions of mod- 
ern science. But we have seen more than one of these long- 
accepted generalizations seriously impugned, and it may be 
that, in the light of the new_ knowledge, we shall find that this 
widely accepted dictum of science, that the universe is proceed- 
ing fatally to the extinction of its available energy, is also 
legitimate matter of deliberate question." (R. K. Duncan's 
"New Knowledge," p. 241.) 

[139] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

assumed that as the lower animals have no future life 
neither can man have. The similitude breaks at 
once when we contemplate the evolution of the psychic 
faculties or the consciousness of animals and man. 

In the psychic evolution of the lower animals, 
there has come a full stop. Man too has stopped in 
physical evolution; yet even here there is no cer- 
tainty that the stop is full and final. But with the 
lower animals both in psychic capacity and in mor- 
phological development the stop is final and complete. 
Therefore the fact that man has an expanding self- 
consciousness and ever widening psychic capacities, 
shows that he is not to be compared as to the possibili- 
ties of his nature with those of the inferior kingdoms. 

As well say because the fish and reptile were never 
permitted to expand wings and fly into the air, there- 
fore by no possibility could there be flying birds. 
That would be absolutely true to the fish world which 
would have no consciousness or realization of the bird 
world. Yet we know Nature saw to it, that in the 
fulness of time the bird world should evolve from 
the fish and the reptile world. There is no possible 
comparison to be drawn between the potential facul- 
ties of man and the limited faculties of the already 
finished lower kingdoms. 

(14) It is sometimes triumphantly demanded that 
if there be a soul in man susceptible of immortality, 
insomuch as immortality is impossible to the lower 
animals, then the exact place and point in the evolu- 
tion of man should be indicated when the soul in him 
began, and when began his potential immortality. 
The answer is clearly set forth in the story of the 
[140] 



SUMMARY OF SCIENTIFIC NEGATIONS 

evolution of self-consciousness. The exact time when 
man ascends from the plane of the inferior animal- 
kingdom — appears to be when as man he first be- 
gins to come to consciousness, and that is placed by 
some psychologists at the second year, when the 
physical organ of thought and consciousness germin- 
ally unfolds. So that even by studying the physical 
formation of the human brain* we may discern an 
answer to this subtle yet fallacious objection to the 
possible immortality of man. 

(15) It is again objected that as the mind is a 
function of the brain when the brain expires neces- 
sarily self-consciousness must expire with it. But 
it has as yet by no means been clearly proved by 
science that the mind is a function of the brain and 
that the brain's existence is prior to that of the mind. 

First, we are to note the process of rational 
phenomena in Nature; although there may be no 
antecedent design or purpose there is manifestly a 
rational procedure throughout it all. It is admitted 
by biologists and zoologists that living organisms 
give evidence, even in their minutest tissues and 
cells, of purpose everywhere. So long as Nature, 
then, executed or accomplished rational acts, before 

* Even Haeckel, who of course stands stoutly for the biegenetic 
theory of the human goul, and insists that in nature and poten- 
tial future existence it cannot be differentiated from that of 
the inferior forms of life, says: 

"Personally out of many contradictory theories, I take that to be 
the most probable which holds the centralization of the nervous 
system ( Haeckel 's boldface) to be a condition of consciousness; 
and that is wanting in the lower classes of animals." ("Riddle 
of the Universe," p. 175.) (Boldface type by the author.) 

And again: "I share the view that true consciousness (thought and 
reason), is only present in those higher animals which hav« a 
centralked nervous system and organs of sense of a c»rtain 
degree of development." (Idem p. 182.) 

[141] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

the brain of man came into existence, it is manifest 
that what we call thinking or a mental process 
existed before the brain of man was formed. 

But again we have even nearer to us a better illus- 
tration of the priority of mind and its supremacy 
over the brain in the actions of what we call vicar- 
ious organs. That is, when an injury has befallen 
an organ, other organs in the system, unaccustomed 
to such duties, will perform them, even though the 
original organ is never improved and restored/ If 
it is not consciousness or a mental process that ac- 
complishes this function, and thus proves that it is 
qualifiedly superior to the submissive office of the 
brain, then there is no apparent explanation to be 
had. 

(16) Once more, it is argued that because the 
primitive conception of the soul's existence arose 
among savage tribes in attempting to understand the 
existence and nature of the shadow that follows the 
body in the sunlight, therefore the entire conception 
of the soul and its possibilities is a product of mythi- 
cal imagination and should be disowned by scientific 
thought. 

^This vicarious action seems to begin at the very fountain head of 
life, in the vital cell. The cells are motivated by such mar- 
vellous intelligence that we are forced to attribute to each of 
them an individual mind. Showing how these cells not only 
affect their obvious functions in receiving food and eliminating 
waste, Dr. Moore says in his "Origin of Nature and Life", 
that "the classes of cells are greater artists and take wider 
interest than this ; few of them resemble in narrowness of life 
and austerity of outlook the so-called human specialist. In 
nearly every case the cell of a given type possesses what might 
perhaps be described as a hobby in addition to its more ob- 
vious function, and the secret hobby is often more all-important 
than the obvious day's task, for in some instances the ob- 
vious function may be destroyed without causing death, its place 
being UNDERTAKEN VICARIOUSLY BY SOME OTHER 
PART." (Home Lib. ed. p. 229, 30.) (Boldface type by the 
author.) 

[142] 



SUMMARY OF SCIENTIFIC NEGATIONS 

As weU say that because all that we now know 
originated in ignorance; since all the hypotheses and 
discoveries of science, or at least many of them, 
originated in the fanciful dreams and conceptions of 
minds inspired by vagaries and foolish theories, there- 
fore this age of culture must disown what science has 
actually achieved by its labors/ 

Manifestly the duty of science is to investigate and 
explain the origin of heathen and savage theories and 
notions, but because out of such vagaries and phan- 
tasies there has developed a more rational hypothesis 
of human existence is no reason why such a deduction 
should be rejected as absurd. 

Even if it were absolutely true that the notion 
of the soul arose from the shadow, and the notion of 
an after existence arose from the experience of 
dreams, which is probably true ; that would not neces- 
sarily demonstrate the fact that there is no soul and no 
hereafter. For, however ridiculous the original 
heathen or savage conception may have been, a later 
and more intelligent interpretation of human life 
might lead to a similar deduction, even though the 
basis of the heathen's deduction was wholly false and 
ridiculous. 

•The eminent Swedish Astronomer, Arrhenius, in his "Life of the 
Universe" (Harper's Lib., Living Thought, vol. 1, p. 54), 
hints this fact when he says, referring to the primitive Beliefs 
as to Creation: "I have attempted to sketch out the cosmical 
beliefs dating from the ages in which direct physical observa- 
tions were hardly known. Natural science then appears in the 
garb of myth; when risen to a higher level it assumes the 
many-folded cloak of philosophy. Matters change when observa- 
tions and experiences are collected. Then man begins to look 
for general rules, under which the cumbrous mass of data can 
be classed in simple, lucid form." 



[143] 



CHAPTEB XXI 

Why Science Has Not Answered 
the Riddle 

We will here tersely smrnn arize and recapitolate 
the tentative reasons (previonsly discussed in consid- 
erable detail) why we think science is not yet qualified 
by sufficient information to assert the absolute denial 
of the possibility of an after existence to humankind. 

(1) Science is yet too ill-informed as to the ulti- 
mate realities of Nature, a^d of the origin of plane- 
tary life to pronounce final judgment as to its poten- 
tial continuity after death. 

(2) Science does not seem to be justified in pro- 
claiming protoplasm — the physical basis of life — 
the subject of inherent decay and ultimate dissolution. 

(3) Science is not yet sufficiently acquainted with 
the complex structure of the cell of life, and its mys- 
terious vital energy, to declare that it contains no ele- 
ments that may survive the shock of death and form 
the basis of a new existence. 

(4) Science has attained no final consensus as to 
the problem of the Vital Force, or the theory that 
Vitalism is a distinctive energy in Nature, indepen- 
dent of the physical forces ; therefore, she should feel 
compelled to pause in her pronouncement as to the 
final possibilities of such a force, once manifested on 
earth, and as to the actual annihilation of a principle 
that seems paramount in Nature. 

[144] 



SCIENCE HAS NOT ANSWERED THE RIDDLE 

(5) The nature and possibilities of Consciousness 
are still the crux of philosophy and psychology, and 
science does not seem justified in declaring that it is 
a mere function of the brain or a product of the molec- 
ular activity of the brain substance. 

(6) Like consciousness, thought still puzzles the 
contemplations of science and philosophy, and its 
nature and possibilities are yet to be apprehended. 
Science now rejects its former attitude that it is a 
secretion of the brain cells as bile is of the liver, and 
seems inclined to regard it as an activity parallel with 
the activity of the brain cells. It is therefore not yet 
justified in declaring that such an activity is temporal 
until it is more thoroughly acquainted with its nature 
and the laws that control it. 

(7) Science in recent years has discovered the 
dissolution of the atomic units of matter and reduced 
matter to a plane of immaterial substance, similar to 
that of alleged spirit, and qualified with extraordi- 
nary powers wholly contradictory of those of gross 
matter. 

(8) As the ultimate essence of the vital principle 
may consist of this immaterial phase of matter, whose 
properties utterly contradict the properties of visible 
and perishable matter, Science does not yet seem to 
be justified in declaring that this vital principle must 
dissolve with the death of the organic body. 

(9) In view of the achievements of mental con- 
trol over physical functions by the exercise of hyp- 
notic suggestion. Science does not appear justified in 
declaring the priority of the brain and its superior 
control of the mind, or that the mind, as consciousness, 

[145] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

is not a permanent principle and may survive the 
cessation of the physical functions in death. 

(10) In view of the achievements of modern Psy- 
chical Research, the discovery of telepathy and 
thought transference, as well as alleged spirit-com- 
munion, Science should reserve its final negative ver- 
dict on the fate of the dead, at least until a consensus 
of opinion may be legitimately attained as to the na- 
ture and correct interpretation of such experiences. 

(11) Considering the limitations of man's percep- 
tion and his powers of reason, when contemplating 
the infinity of the universe and its vast potencies and 
possibilities, is it not too presumptuous for Science 
dogmatically to assert a negative enunciation relative 
to the potential existence of a realm of whose nature 
it as yet knows but very little, and whose laws and 
properties are apparently beyond the present appre- 
hension of the human mind? 

In a universe such as this that seems to be framed 
by the milky way, where the light of a star traveling 
at the rate of 186,000 miles a second beginning at any 
point would require to traverse the entire distance 
and return to the same point 300,000,000 of years, it 
would seem that we must be modest when we attempt 
to decide upon any of the ultimate problems of exist- 
ence. For the present, at least, Science must raise 
at the grave not an exclamation, but an interroga- 
tion, in humble inquiry. 

"It may be so with us, that in the dark 
When we have done with Time and wander Space, 
Some meeting of the blind may strike a spark, 
And to Death's empty mansion give a grace. 

[146] 



SCIENCE HAS NOT ANSWERED THE RIDDLE 

It may be, that the loosened soul may find 
Some new delight of living without limbs, 
Bodiless joy of flesh-untrammelled mind, 
Peace like a sky where starlike spirit swims. 
It may be that the million cells of sense, 
Loosed from their seventy years' adhesion, pass 
Each to some joy of changed experience, 
Weight in the earth or glory in the grass. 
It may be that we cease ; we cannot tell. 
Even if we cease, life is a miracle." 



[147] 



CHAPTER XXII 

The Bankruptcy of Scientific 
Theories 

Concerning so vast and difficult a problem it is 
especially judicious that Science maintain a patient, 
cautious and undogmatic attitude, for Science herself 
has so often been forced to retract many of her 
hypotheses and even her imagined laws of Nature. 

We must not fail to remember that what are termed 
laws of Nature by Science are after all but the keen 
interpretations, the penetrating deductions, the happy 
guesses of brilliant geniuses. 

No scientist in the world today is sure that tomor- 
row will not reveal a new field of facts in Nature that 
may compel him wholly to revise his interpretation 
of the Cosmos and restate even what he has long re- 
garded as its fundamental laws. 

It may seem startling and by many unbelievable 
that such declarations are truthful, nevertheless a 
brief review of the history of some of the alleged dis- 
covered laws of Nature by scientists will sustain the 
assertion. 

For many centuries Astronomers advocated the 
hypothesis of the geocentric conception of the uni- 
verse. Within the compass of man's knowledge, in 
that age, the hypothesis was justified and dogmati- 
cally assured. Indeed so positive was the science of 
that time (unfortunately re-enforced by the autocracy 

[148] 



BANKRUPTCY OF SCIENTIFIC THEORIES 

of a religious hierarchy) that it endangered one's life 
to attempt even to question the notion that the earth 
was the centre of the Cosmos, the largest and the 
most important of all the stars and worlds exposed 
to human observation. 

It must not be forgotten that when Copernicus 
(1473-1543) discovered the mechanical arrangement 
of the heavens and the motion of the stars, wherein 
the ancient Ptolemaic astronomy was challenged, and 
the geocentric theory demolished, he lay in fear, with 
this discovery under his pillow for nearly thirty years, 
and then only, with trembling prayers for mercy, 
delivered his message to the world. 

We are inclined to rebuke the ecclesiastical author- 
ities of that age for its terrorism and consequent 
retardation of scientific discovery; but we must not 
forget that the ecclesiastical attitude was also the 
attitude of the then extant scientific mind, and the 
scientists of that day were as much to blame and 
worthy of rebuke as were the ecclesiastics. 

I refer to this humiliating situation in the scienti- 
fic world, which was still more humiliatingly illus- 
trated in the case of Galileo, who was forced to lie 
about his discovery of the satellites of Jupiter, merely 
to emphasize the necessity of a philosophical disposi- 
tion in attempting to discern the true laws of Nature, 
and the virtue of modesty even among those who are 
so privileged to penetrate the mysteries of the uni- 
verse. For we shall find that the absurd tyranny of 
bigotry against the instinct of discovery and progress 
was a blight not only on an age of comparative uni- 
versal ignorance, but that it has even mildewed many 

[149] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

a bright flower of scientific genius in more intelligent 
epochs. 

Before Dr. Priestley (1733-1804) accomplished the 
arduous task of discovering oxygen which culminated 
in the analysis of the air, such a simple phenomenon 
as a burning flame created much confusion of thought 
in the scientific world and defied rational explanation. 
Among many theories presented the one commonly 
adopted in that period of awakening knowledge was 
that of ''phlogiston". 

This hypothesis assumed that when a fiame was 
produced Nature mysteriously introduced into the 
burning object an unkown substance called "phlo- 
giston," which itself constituted the element of flame. 
According to Stahl there was a difference between a 
flame that represented fire in action, or as we would 
now say dynamic or kinetic flame, and a flame invis- 
ibly latent Vvithin a burning object, which we would 
now call potential flame. 

Of course the theory was purely imaginary and 
when the true origin of the flame was revealed by the 
discovery of Priestley's oxygen, whose affinity for 
carbon dislodged the mystery and revealed the truth, 
the hypothesis was reluctantly relinquished. 

The opposition to Priestley (doubly aggravated by 
his nonconf ormism and his defense of French Revolu- 
tionists) was so great that he suffered personal in- 
jury and the destruction of property as the price he 
must pay for divulging to a brutal age an honest truth 
which had been vouchsafed to his genius. Think not 
that it was only the theologic opposition which he was 
forced to endure. The scientists of his time, reared 

[150] 



BANKRUPTCY OF SCIENTIFIC THEORIES 

in the old school of dogmatism and cock-sure tyranny, 
opposed him as bitterly as did the Biblicists. 

Dr. William Harvey (1578-1657), the discoverer of 
the circulation of blood, met with a similar exper- 
ience ; according to some authorities, his practice com- 
pletely f eU away, and * ' 'twas believed by the vulgar 
that he was crackbrained, and all the physicians were 
against him." 

Slowly through the ages the iron bands of mental 
tyranny were melted and men dared to investigate 
Nature, and study and reveal her wonders without 
incurring the suffering and humiliation of the past. 

Nevertheless the instinctive tenaciousness of the 
human mind to cling to a conception once avouched 
is steadily manifested in the history of scientific 
progress. 

Thus, one by one Science seems to be compelled to 
surrender many of her past positions. For instance 
but a little while ago we had supposed that La Place's 
discovery of the origin and mechanism of the heavens 
was an hypothesis which Science accepted as almost 
final truth. 

The nebular hypothesis had become a creed sworn 
by among the leading and legitimate astronomers of 
the world. But in our day the theory is considerably 
modified by another, called by Chamberlain the 
"planetesimal hypothesis", which may ultimately 
necessitate the re-writing of text books and revision 
of the interpretation of the origin of the Cosmos. So 
that the classic Nebular Hypothesis, while it may not 
be laid entirely on the shelf, will not hereafter hold 

[151] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

the absolute and supreme position in the scientific 
world which, it has to the present maintained. 

Of course we have so far advanced in the practical 
principles of freedom that the announcement of a new 
hypothesis, which overthrows the foundations of an 
ancient and classic theor^^, no longer convulses the 
age and causes terror in the human heart. Yet, I 
mention this experience to illustrate how the theoreti- 
cal attitude for a long period honored by Science is 
forced to suffer change, as the Book of Nature di- 
vulges more of her secret knowledge. 

Likewise, as shown in previous pages of this study, 
the time honored conception of the final conflagration 
and destruction of this planet and even the entire 
solar system, which had so long called forth lugubri- 
ous and mournful sermons on the instability of the 
universe, is now discovered to be probably a myth 
and the starry worlds as well as our own planet are 
endued with inherent energy enough to maintain their 
existence, in spite of the cessation of the sun's radia- 
tion, for countless millions of years. 

And even more startling possibilities of revolu- 
tionary scientific deduction are threatened by some 
bold and undiscouraged investigators. For there are 
those who are temerarious enough to assert that the 
time honored laws of matter and energy, which postu- 
lated that matter was indestructible and energy could 
never increase or decrease its total cosmic sum, are 
about to be relegated to oblivion. If this should suc- 
ceed it would indeed undermine the foundations of 
the entire system of modern scientific instruction and 
compel a completely new interpretation of Nature. 

[152] 



BANKKUPTCY OF SCIENTIFIC THEORIES 

In 1843 the equivalence between mechanical work 
and heat was definitely discovered. This gave rise to 
the distinct definition of the conservation of energy 
which was stated by Clerk Maxwell as follows : ' * The 
total energy of any body or system of bodies is a quan- 
tity which can neither be increased nor diminished by 
any mutual action of such bodies, though it may be 
transformed into any one of the forms of which 
energy is susceptible." 

This law was regarded as so fundamental and ab- 
solute when finally discovered, though often tenta- 
tively approached before, that it was not supposed 
the time would come when it would be questioned or 
denied. Huxley declared : " It follows that energy like 
matter is indestructible and ingenerable, in Nature. 
The phenomenal world, so far as it is material, ex- 
presses the evolution and involution of energy, its 
passage from the kinetic to the potential condition 
and back again. Wherever motion of matter takes 
place, that motion is affected at the expense of part of 
the total store of energy. ' ' 

Now it is remarkable that recent laboratory experi- 
ments are beginning to force the question whether 
this law is, after all, fundamental and universal; 
whether, indeed, both the indestructibility of matter 
and that of energy are not to be called in question. 
Such authorities as M. Lucien Poincare ( ' ' Science and 
Hypothesis") and Gustave Le Bon (''Evolution of 
Matter" and "Evolution of Forces") not only inti- 
mate that the hypotheses must be surrendered but de- 
clare that Science demands it. Descanting upon the 
final disappearance of the electron, or electric atom, 

[163] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

Le Bon says (Revue Scientifique, vol. xx), ''Matter 
considered as energy condensed -imder a form in which 
it acquires weight, form, and fixity has become trans- 
formed into imponderable elements that are no longer 
matter, but are not yet ether. Of their destiny we 
are still ignorant. . . . But how can they disappear? 
Can we suppose that their destiny is like that of 
blocks of ice that float about in the polar regions and 
preserve their individual existence so long as they 
do not encounter the only cause that can destroy 
them — an elevation of temperature ? As soon as this 
cause of destruction acts upon them they vanish and 
disappear. When it has radiated all its energy it dis- 
appears in ether and is no more.'* 

This possibility of the ultimate resolution of matter 
and energy into pure ether points not only to the 
disappearance of matter but even of energy. "^ 

It is a conception that overwhelms all the classic 
notions of the past, since the days of Aristotle and 
Thales, as to the indestructibleness of matter, yet 
far seeing modern physicists are not fearful of making 
the declaration. Even Sir William Crookes, in his 
famous address before the Congress of Applied Chem- 
istry, already referred to, says, ''Although the whole 
range of human experience is all too short to afford 
a parallel whereby the date of the extinction of matter 
can be calculated, protyle, the 'formless mist', once 

^"This conception evidently does not agree with the first principle 
of thermo-dynamics; but if the dogma of the indestructibility 
of matter is taken away; that of the conservation of energy 
seems likewise somewhat menaced. ... It seems very probable, 
and I am not alone in thinking so, that the law of the con- 
servation of energy, whose uncertain limits have been so bril- 
liantly demonstrated by M. Poincare in his recent work, *La 
Science et rHypotlieses', is, like most physical laws .... true 
only within limits." (Le Bon as above.) 

[154] 



BANKEUPTCY OF SCIENTIFIC THEORIES 

again may reign supreme, and the hour hand of eter- 
nity will have completed one revolution." 

Thus it is never safe for scientific dogma to assert 
itself and declare the impossibility of a revolutionary 
discovery. 

It is a suggestive fact that at the very moment that 
Cyrus Field was preparing to lay the Atlantic Cable, 
an Oxford professor was diagram m atically expound- 
ing upon a blackboard, by mathematical accuracy 
and determinism, the utter impossibility of such a 
feat within natural limitations. And in the very year 
that Darwin was born (1809) Cuvier was trium- 
phantly exclaiming the impossibility of the transmu- 
tation of the species and the fixity in Nature of species 
that now exist; arranging in his laboratory at the 
time the bones of reconstructed skeletons of animals 
whose fossil existence unwittingly belied the very de- 
claration he was making. 

If then Science is compelled so often to review and 
reinterpret the nature of phenomena and the funda- 
mental principles of the universe, it certainly be- 
comes it well to be modest in the presence of a prob- 
lem so profound as that involved in the potentialities 
of planetary life, and its prophetic possibilities be- 
yond the grave. 

2 "The orthodox scientific beliefs of one generation become, in part, 
at least, the scientific myths of a succeeding one, and science, 
just as much as religion, possesses its dead mythology. It by 
no means follows that these myths of religion and science did 
not serve a useful purpose in those days when they were living 
and powerful beliefs, but, when new knowledge, power and 
methods arise, they must be cast on one side, and replaced by 
better machinery to lead to new revelations. They are the 
scaffolding of the structure in the course of erection and not an 
intrinsic part or a permanent adornment of it." (Dr. Moore's 
"Origin of Nature and Life," p. 26, 7.) 

[155] 



CHAPTER XXIII 

Schopenhauer's Fallacy 

To illustrate tlie manner in which metaphysics or 
philosophy may confuse the potential realities of Na- 
ture, may not the author at this juncture introduce 
that very fetching dialogue invented by Schopenhauer 
on the presumed annihilation of the individual in the 
grand dramatic Tragedy of Being. 

BBIORTALITY: A DIALOGUE 

Thrasymachos — Philalethes 

Thuasymachos. — Tell me now, in one word, "what 
shall I be after my death? And mind you be clear 
and precise. 

Philalethes. — All and nothing. 

THRASY:y:ACHOS. — I thought so! I gave you a 
problem and you solve it by a contradiction. That's 
a very stale trick. 

Philalethes. — Yes, but you raise transcendental 
questions, and you expect me to answer them in lan- 
guage that is only made for immanent knowledge. 
It's no wonder that a contradiction ensues. 

Thrasymachos. — What do you mean by transcen- 
dental questions and immanent knowledge? I've 
heard these expressions before, of course ; they are 
not new to me. The professor was fond of using them, 
but only as predicates of the Deity, and he never 
talked of anything else ; which was all quite right and 
proper. He argued thus: if the Deity was in the 
world itself, he was immanent; if he was somewhere 
outside it, he was transcendent. Nothing could be 

[156] 



SCHOPENHAUER'S FALLACY 

clearer and more obvious. You knew where you were. 
But this Kantian rigmarole won't do any more: it's 
antiquated and no longer applicable to modern ideas. 
Why, we've had a whole row of eminent men in the 
metropolis of German learning — 

Philalethes (aside). — German humbug, he 
means. 

Thrasymachos. — The mighty Schleiermacher, for 
instance, and that gigantic intellect, Hegel; and at 
this time of day we've abandoned that nonsense. I 
should rather say we 're so far beyond it that we can 't 
put up with it any more. What 's the use of it then ? 
What does it all mean? 

Philalethes. — Transcendental knowledge is knowl- 
edge which passes beyond the bounds of possible ex- 
perience, and strives to determine the nature of things 
as they are in themselves. Immanent knowledge, on 
the other hand, is knowledge which confines itself 
entirely within those bounds ; so that it cannot apply 
to anything but actual phenomena. As far as you are 
an individual, death will be the end of you. But your 
individuality is not your true and inmost being : it is 
only the outward manifestation of it. It is not the 
thing in-itself, but only the phenomenon presented in 
the form of time ; and therefore with a beginning and 
an end. But your real being knows neither time nor 
beginning nor end, nor yet the limits of any given 
individual. It is everywhere present in every indi- 
vidual, and no individual can exist apart from it. So 
when death comes, on the one hand you are annihi- 
lated as an individual; on the other, you are and re- 
main everything. That is what I meant when I said 
that after your death you would be all and nothing. 
It is difficult to find a more precise answer to your 
question and at the same time be brief. The answer 
is contradictory, I admit ; but it is so simply because 
your life is in time, and the immortal part of you in 
eternity. You may put the matter thus: Your im- 

[157] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

mortal part is something that does not last in time 
and yet is indestructible ; but there you have another 
contradiction. You see what happened by trying to 
bring the transcendental within the limits of im- 
manent knowledge. It is in some sort doing violence 
to the latter by misusing it for ends it was never 
meant to serve. 

Theastmachos. — Look here, I sha'n't give two- 
pence for your immortality unless I'm to remain an 
individual. 

Philalethes. — "Well, perhaps I may be able to 
satisfy you on this point. Suppose I guarantee that 
after death you shall remain an individual, but only 
on condition that you first spend three months of com- 
plete unconsciousness. 

Theasymachos. — I shall have no objection to that. 

Philalethes. — But remember, if people are com- 
pletely unconscious, they take no account of time. So, 
when you are dead, it's all the same to you whether 
three months pass in the world of unconsciousness, or 
ten thousand years. In one case as in the other, it is 
simply a matter of believing what is told you when 
you awake. So far, then you can afford to be indif- 
ferent whether it is three months or ten thousand 
years that pass before you recover your individuality. 

Theasymachos. — Yes, if it comes to that, I sup- 
pose you're right. 

Phh.alethes. — And if by chance, after those ten 
thousand years have gone by, no one ever thinks of 
awakening you, I fancy it would be no great misfor- 
tune. You would have become quite accustomed to 
non-existence after so long a spell of it — following 
upon such a very few years of life. At any rate 
you may be sure you would be perfectly ignorant of 
the whole thing. Further, if you knew that the mys- 
terious power which keeps you in your present state 
of life had never once ceased in those ten thousand 
years to bring forth other phenomena like yourself, 

[158] 



SCHOPENHAUER'S FALLACY 

and to endow them with life, it would fully console 
you. 

Thrasymachos. — Indeed! So you think you're 
quietly going to do me out of my individuality with 
all this fine talk. But I'm, up to your tricks. I tell 
you I won't exist unless I can have my individuality. 
I'm not going to put off with '' mysterious powers," 
and what you call "phenomena." I can't do without 
my individuality, and I won't give it up. 

Philalethes. — You mean, I suppose, that your in- 
dividuality is such a delightful thing — so splendid, so 
perfect, and beyond compare — that you can't imag- 
ine anything better. Aren't you ready to exchange 
your present state for one which, if we can judge by 
what is told us, may possibly be superior and more 
endurable ? 

Thrasymachos. — Don't you see that my individ- 
uality, be it what it may, is my very self? To me it 
is the most important thing in the world, 
"For God is God and I am I." 
I want to exist, /, I. That's the main thing. I don't 
care about existence which has to be proved to be 
mine, before I can believe it. 

Philalethes. — Think what you're doing! "When 
you say /, 7, / want to exist, it is not you alone that 
says this. Everything says it, absolutely everything 
that has the faintest trace of consciousness. It fol- 
lows then, that this desire of yours is just the part 
of you that is not individual — the part that is com- 
mon to all things without distinction. It is the cry, 
not of the individual, but of existence itself ; it is the 
intrinsic element in everything that exists, nay, it is 
the cause of anything existing at all. This desire 
craves for and so is satisfied with nothing less than 
existence in general — not any definite individual ex- 
istence. No! that is not its aim. It seems to be so 
only because this desire — this will — attains conscious- 
ness only in the individual, and therefore looks as 

[159] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

though it were concerned with nothing but the in- 
dividual. There lies the illusion, an illusion it is 
true, in which the individual is held fast: but, if he 
reflects, he can break the fetters and set himself free. 
It is only indirectly, I say, that the individual has 
this violent craving for existence. It is the will to 
live which is the real and direct aspirant — alike and 
identical in all things. Since then, existence is the 
free work, nay, the mere reflection of the will, where 
existence is, there too, must be will: and for the mo- 
ment, the will finds its satisfaction in existence it- 
self; so far, I mean, as that which never rests, but 
presses forward eternally, can ever find any satisfac- 
tion at all. The will is careless of the individual: 
the individual is not its business; although, as I have 
said, this seems to be the case, because the individual 
has no direct consciousness of will except in himself. 
The effect of this is to make the individual careful to 
maintain his own existence; and if this were not so, 
there would be no surety for the preservation of the 
species. From all this it is clear that individuality 
is not a form of perfection, but rather of limitation; 
and so to be freed from it is not loss but gain. 
Trouble yourself no more about the matter. Once 
thoroughly recognize what you are, what your exist- 
ence reaUy is, namely, the universal will to live and 
the whole question will seem to you childish and most 
ridiculous ! 

Thrasymachos. — You're childish yourself and 
most ridiculous, like all philosophers ! and if a man of 
my age lets himself in for a quarter-of -an-hour 's talk 
with such fools, it is only because it amuses me and 
passes the time. I've more important business to 
attend to, so good-by. 

In this delightful conversation, however, does not 
our amiable philosopher lose sight of Nature's own 
prophetic intimations? 

[160] 



SCHOPENHAUER'S FALLACY 

Is not the cry of the "I" within, the urge of 
Nature that prophesies a far-off culmination of her 
efforts? As we shall see hereafter Nature casts ulti- 
mately in the mould of physical form the psychic 
purpose whose end she serves. As she has already 
achieved her prophecy in the amoeba by crowning its 
ascent in the glorious culmination of Man, so she is 
now revealing to us the fact that in man only has 
self-consciousness come into being because in him 
only among all animals has she prepared the physical 
frame through which self -consciousness — the "I'' can 
exist and manifest its functions. 

Already in the amoeba the germinal consciousness 
existed but Nature required inconceivable aeons for 
the perfection and fulfillment of its towering cul- 
mination in human self-consciousness. 

Are we not then justified in assuming, on the as- 
surance of Nature's laws, that, as ultimately she 
fashioned the apparatus or instrument in man, 
through which self -consciousness (the **I") could 
function, now that through that very instrument she 
institutes the cry or yearning for endless persistence 
or uninterrupted continuity of that "I" (self -con- 
sciousness), that she will esewhere and somehow 
evolve a framework, indestructible in character, 
through which this evolving consciousness may mani- 
fest its functional force? 

That is the thesis we endeavor to elucidate in this 
treatise. In the same manner, Ernst Haeckel, of 
Jena, writing upon a similar theme, seems to overlook 
the principle of the persistence of energy, and its 
consequent possibilities in the evolution of conscious- 

[161] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

ness. We need not dispute his premise that con- 
sciousness originates in the germinal plasm or life- 
unit and by natural processes eventuates in the won- 
derful brain and self-consciousness of Man. But 
where we differ from Haeckel is in his conclusion that 
the inertia of the energy, which begins in amoeba and 
attains its climax in man, then ceases to exist and in 
contradiction of the theory of the permanence and in- 
destructibility of energy is totally annihilated or 
passes into a new variety of dynamic expression. Let 
us examine his conclusions. 

Speaking of the ''Eternity of Energy," he says: 
''The dynamic or energetic principle of our Monism, 
the principle of the constancy of force, forms the 
basis of the assumption that all phenomena of the 
universe are referrable to the actions of one and the 
same attribute of substance — an all pervading cosmic 
force (energy or dynamis, formerly called simply 
"force" by analogy with the action of the muscles)." 

Again, speaking of what he calls ' ' The Eternity of 
the Psychom," he says, "The psychological princi- 
ple of our monism, the constancy of the world-soul, in 
inorganic as well as in organic nature, are connected 
with a certain inner kind of sensation which gives 
the different parts of matter an unconscious percep- 
tion of their environment, of the outside world. This 
'soul' in matter is shown most clearly in the funda- 
mental law of chemistry, called chemical affinity." 

Thus far we observe he emphasizes the dynamis, 
the energy, in its evolving forms of expression. Evi- 
dently it is this dynamis, whatever it may absolutely 

[162] 



SCHOPENHAUER'S FALLACY 

be, which is the formative and propulsive principle 
at work in world-evolution. 

He then calls attention to a feature of imperman- 
ence that paradoxically complements the universal 
and infinite permanence of Nature. Of * ' Eternity and 
Impermanence, " he says, *'In apparent contradiction 
to the all pervading law of substance, the eternity of 
the universe, is the great natural law of the im- 
permanence of each separate part in it, of the limited 
duration of individual things. " * * The reason for this 
contradiction is that all individual forms are limited 
in time and space and dependent on the outside or 
surrounding world. . . . Pythagoras and his school 
were wrong in assuming that form is the essence of 
all things. . . . Evolution does depend, however, on 
constant change, a metamorphosis of individual 
parts/' 

Now on these postulates Haeckel rests his conclusion 
of the absolute destruction of individual life in death 
and states his proposition as follows: *' According to 
the scientific conception of Monism the human spirit 
is either identical with the human soui, or it is re- 
garded as a special higher part of its activity. In 
either case it is a function of the phronema, the organ 
of thought in the brain. With the destruction of the 
brain at death, therefore, it too, perishes. ' ' ^ 

Superficially this appears as a strong and convinc- 
ing argument. But let us accept it at its face value, 
discounting none of the propositions or premises. 

^The quotations are made from an article by Haeckel on "Science 
and Eternity" in the Truth-Seeker (N. Y.), March 4, 1916. 
See also Haeckel' s last book, "Eternity." 

[163] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

Does the logical deduction which Haeckel reaches be- 
come mandatory? 

He speaks of the phronema, the brain, etc. ; he also 
speaks of individual forms which enjoy only tem- 
porary existence (impermanence) in the midst of the 
universal permanence of the Energy, the universal 
Dynamis. Now, what is the cause of the form, in 
Haeckel's system of Monism? Answer: Dynamis. 
What is the cause of the destruction and transforma- 
tion of individual forms or things? Answer: Dyna- 
mis. What is the reason of the impermanence and 
transformation of things or forms? Answer: The 
demand of the Dynamis for larger and more complete 
expression. In Evolution the unfolding apparatus 
develop es into higher and more enduring forms. 

Now, then, on Haeckel's own ground, what is the 
origin of the spirit, or soul or consciousness of man? 
Answer: The infinite and universal Dynamis. 
Through what form of matter does the consciousness 
of man express itself? Through the brain and ner- 
vous system. Why were the brain and phronema or- 
ganized and formed? Answer: That the Dynamis 
might have an apparatus through which better to ex- 
press itself than through the nervous apparatus of 
the lower animal kingdom. 

What was it that worked on through all evolution 
from fundamental chemical affinity (sensation) to 
the self consciousness of Man? Answer: Dynamis. 

In short we find according to Haeckel's Monism that 
the one permanent, persisting and morphogenetic 
principle which acts as the maker, builder and guide 

[164] 



SCHOPENHAUER'S FALLACY 

of all phenomenal expression is the Permanent and 
all-pervasive Dynamis or Energy. 

We also find that according to this system the 
Dynamus finds the occasion for its higher and more 
perfect expression through the finer apparatus, which 
it builds for itself, in the ascending scale of evolution 
from amoeba to Man. 

It possesses the phronema, which it has ultimately 
generated, because in the processes of animal-devel- 
opment a substance (nervous fluid) was finally en- 
gendered that made possible the manifestations 
of Dynamis in the phases af animal and human con- 
sciousness. 

In short, the natural and logical deduction to be 
drawn from Haeckel's propositions is this: Given a 
universe of substance susceptible to infinite variation 
and transformation, and the principle of Permanent 
Energy which pervades and inheres throughout the 
universe of substance, and there will result ever un- 
folding and better adapted apparatus through which 
the Energy may more fully and completely express 
itself. But : When the apparatus ceases, the Energy, 
or morphogenetic principle, continues, and necessarily 
works on. 

Now, the energy of consciousness admittedly 
ceases to act in such form of consciousness, as the 
brain-apparatus, or phronema, of the present body 
permits. But does the inertia of the energy of con- 
sciousness cease, because the present apparatus 
ceases? That is the question; and by no means does 
the acceptance of the ultimate principles of Monism 
demand this conclusion. In this treatise we have 

[165] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

been contending that consciousness is a form of en- 
ergy, and that the inertia of that energy, once exist- 
ing, must continue somehow to express itself. It can- 
not do so through the apparatus of the human brain 
after death, true. But its continuity will, manifestly, 
depend on the presence of some phase of substance, 
which may be amenable to the maziipulation of the 
consciousness-energy. In this treatise we have been 
contending that there already exists in the human 
organism, especially in the brain and nervous sys- 
tem, a most rare and primary state of matter, which 
bears in itself none of the lethal characteristics of 
ordinary matter. That it is, in nature, permanent. 
That it is the invisible and imponderable primary 
substance out of which all manifest substance is ul- 
timately produced. That as universal Energy (By- 
namis) has revealed its higher potencies in the course 
of evolution by utilizing more susceptible or qualita- 
tively adapted substances, so it may persist in the 
expression, at least, of potential consciousness after 
death. 

This same energy, still in unconscious and primi- 
tive state, existed in inert matter; then it utilized a 
finer substance and evolved colloidal matter; then, it 
seized a still more refined substance and evolved 
protoplasm, then it exuded (so to speak) from pro- 
toplasm a stiU more refined substance and organized 
ultra-miscroscopical primitive life-like units; then in 
these it found a still more susceptible substance and 
organized the nervous system; then a still more 
amenable substance, and organized the brain and ul- 
timately the phronema, organ of thought, and thus 

[166] 



SCHOPENHAUER'S FALLACY 

crowned all with human self-consciousness. Is it not 
then manifest if there still inheres in this same life- 
substance a potentially indestructible and infinitely 
more pliable substance, than what the crude brain- 
cells afford, that this same Energy (Dynamis) will 
seize upon and continue to manifest through such 
substance on an invisible plane, where its activity 
only can thereafter be manifested? 

This is what we contend in this treatise and think 
we have proven to be a fact. The logic of Monism, 
not to say the logic of Nature, manifestly points to 
the continuity of the energy and not to its annihila- 
tion, or even its transmutation into another form of 
visible planetary expression. At the very best 
Monism may lead us to a pause or a doubt ; it cannot 
logically compel us to assume a final attitude. Until 
physics ultimately reveals a more perfect knowedge 
of what primary matter may be and of the possibilities 
of its manipulation by that form of energy we call 
consciousness. Monism, or any other philosophy, is 
not justified in denying the persistence of some form 
of after death continuance. 

But the author of this work is becoming more and 
more convinced that the present discoveries in nat- 
ural law are leading us to an apprehension of the 
fact that Nature is logically pointing to principles 
which indisputably spell after-life, in some form of 
germinal and evolving future consciousness, if not in 
the continuity of present self -consciousness. 



[167] 



BOOK III 



Intimations of Scientific Proof 
of Immortality 



CHAPTER XXIV 

The Unreality of Death 

Thus far we have been studying the efficacy of the 
alleged disproofs of the possible existence of mortal 
man after his decease. And we might rest here and 
say that insomuch as there seems to be no possibility 
of disproving such a potential experience, the race 
might comfortably remain unconcerned and abide its 
fate. For if there can be no disproof of a possible 
immortality, then even though there be no available 
proof, nevertheless there is a sense of comfort in the 
fact that the seal of certainty is not fixed, absolutely 
disqualifying the utility of all further search. 

For, though we may be unconcerned, in our clearer 
states of reason; when despite the cold light of the 
intellect the grave is overcast with gloom and shadow, 
and affords no feeble ray of hope; nevertheless, in 
our more human moments — ^when the tide of the af- 
fections wells within or the joy of mere existence 
thrills the consciousness — ^we feel a subtle yearning 
for life that shall never end, for light that shall never 
fade. 

Indeed, when we contemplate the possibility or 
actuality of absolute extinction it seems utterly be- 
yond our comprehension. 

Who can think himself dead? Who conceive of 
the absolute cessation of the throbbing of the brain, 

[171] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

the beating of the heart — ^the end of all thinking, 
feeling, acting, aspiring? 

Who, when in the glory of a resplendent day, he 
gazes into the golden sky and breathes the exhilarating 
air that sweeps down from some mountain top ; who, 
when he sinks in deep introspection and listens to the 
lispings of his very soul in profound meditation ; who, 
in short, when he communes with his deeper self and 
hearkens to the thoughts that heave from the far pro- 
fundities of being — can grasp the notion that self 
shall think, or feel or act no more? 

The consciousness of death is an absolute impos- 
sibility. We may speak the word — ^but we can never 
realize the meaning of it. DEATH! Pause a mo- 
ment and strive to comprehend it. Strive to realize 
that when you lie down upon your last bed, pillowed 
and mattressed by the rude substances of earth, you 
shall ''sleep no more.'' That you shall sleep the last 
sleep ; that in that last sleep you shall not dream again 
when you have ''shuffled off this mortal coil!" It 
is not only "the dread of something after death that 
puzzles the will and makes us rather bear the ills we 
have than fly to others that we know of;" but it is 
the utter ignorance of the nature of death — ^the un- 
canny presence of a reality we can neither prevent 
nor comprehend. Hence, however much we may deny, 
we cannot help but feel that live we must. It may 
be a delusion — the delusion of the senses that so much 
deceives us in this world — nevertheless, it is an in- 
stinct — a natural reflex of our emotions, and we can 
no more resist it than the eyelid can refuse to wink 

[172] 



THE UNREALITY OF DEATH 

when smitten by dust, or the arm to leap back when 
stung by a blow. 

If this be so it may be the instinct is prophetic of 
truth, and we are tantalized by its infliction because 
the deeper self demands that it shall not be slighted 
or forgotten. Far be it from me to assert, as some 
few do to-day, and as in former years many did, 
namely, that this instinct is not only prophetic or sug- 
gestive of truth, but, that it is an absolute proof of 
the actuality of an after existence. 

This cannot be accepted as a demonstration for the 
reason that we know that our instincts often deceive 
us and we speedily acknowledge our error when truth 
arrives. It is a natural instinct to fly from danger. 
A timber falling may kill us, and therefore often we 
shy at a shadow. The shadow deceived us because 
of our instinct of self -protection. 

So the instinct of life, which is our primal state of 
consciousness, may deceive us when death approaches, 
and because it is natural for U5 to live we instinctively 
refuse to think that we can die. That indeed may be 
mere deception resulting from our utter ignorance of 
death and our constant acquaintance with life. Such 
an instinct is of no avail as a promoter of Truth. 

Nevertheless the fact that the realization of death 
is an impossibility, and that we do hold such constant 
fellowship with life, which makes separation forever 
seem impossible, is a sufficient reason for us never 
to desist in our labors to discover the truth empirically 
and demonstrably if the Book of Nature contains 
aught that may reveal it. 

Therefore I shall continue the study to inquire 

[173] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

whetlier in the acquisition of scientific knowledge any 
fundamental facts have been divulged which may 
point, at least tentatively, to a natural possibility of 
eternal existence. Proof we cannot expect at this 
juncture of human progress and attainment. But if 
not proof of fact, it may be possible that probability 
shall loom large on our observation. It is to this end 
that we proceed. 



[174] 



CHAPTER XXV 

The Appeal of Nature 

In the first section of this work I referred to cer- 
tain corollaries I had drawn from scientific facts in 
my "Modern Light on Immortality." I called atten- 
tion to the first corollary, namely, that ''when man- 
kind shall have discovered the secret laws that ap- 
pertain to the art of living — to Nature's own marvel- 
lous principles of life-sustentation — we shall have 
overcome the mystery of death and shall continue to 
live and fructify in the no longer mortal bodies we 
occupy." I then proceeded to show to what extent 
the more recent researches of science seemed to cor- 
roborate that prophecy. 

In this second section of our study I shall under- 
take to dwell somewhat upon the second corollary I 
formulated in that same book, as a necessary deduc- 
tion from a long series of facts and logical sequences 
which I there arranged. The interested reader will 
find the complete discussion in the work referred to 
("Modern Light on Immortality") which was issued 
in 1909. The second logical corollary there presented 
read as follows: 

"That there shall be developed in some organisms 
such a high degree of self-consciousness that the 
physical seat, in which the spiritual faculty resides 
and operates, shall be so controlled and integrated 
it will be endowed with sufficient strength to continue 

[175] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

its organic activity^ after this 'mortal coil shall have 
been shuffled off.' " 

If this deduction were correct, it would lead to the 
logical conclusion that if after existence be a possi- 
bility at all in Nature, then by the law of spiritual and 
moral survival only such beings would attain to im- 
mortality whose strength of character was sufficiently 
registered in self-consciousness to grant this con- 
sciousness the integrating energy of holding together 
the subtle substance in which the spiritual forces 
shall continue to exist and function. At once the 
objector arises and says that no such deduction will 
satisfy the human instinct of eternal life ; that every 
human being is alike endowed with the desire for 
immortality, therefore, if Nature grants it to one she 
must grant it to all. In the great caravansary of 
human life Nature allows no privileged characters. 

Such an objection is an appeal ad hominem, but it 
can have no standing in the court of science. If the 
law is true as stated ; if the indications of Nature point 
to a survival that shall be attained by the evolution 
of character and consciousness, and is not a free gift 
of mere existence, then merely because it is contrary 
or offensive to human desire and inclination it can- 
not be thrown out of court. 

It is, however, truly astonishing how often edu- 
cated and cultured folk will faU. into this empirical 
error. They speak as though Nature should afford 
them such a status of existence as their predilections 
predispose them to. So some will insist that they 

^Perhaps I should have said "psychic activities" for whether they 
will function in our organic form may be too much detail to 
surmise at present. 

[176] 



THE APPEAL OF NATURE 

have utterly outgrown the superstitious desire to 
continue on after this planetary existence has ceased. 
Therefore as the desire has wholly vanished they 
clearly espy the finality of life in the destiny of the 
grave. They see that men have been deceived by a 
delusion which sprung from ignorance! therefore 
nothing more need be said on the subject — there is no 
life beyond the pit. In the same manner others will 
insist that because their hearts are instinct with the 
desire for the continuity of existence it must needs 
be that they shall live on and on. They do not ask, 
What says Nature; what is Fact? They merely ask 
what is the wish that fathers the thought ! They obey 
the wish because it pleases them. 

But this is not the way to Truth. Nature asks not 
what man wishes or refuses. Man's desires are not 
the makers of Nature's laws. Yet when man dis- 
covers the secrets of Nature and formulates them in 
the expression of a law, there are many ill-informed 
who incline to the notion that the declarer of the 
law is the maker of the law. 

The passion of science is to discover the law; its 
declaration may be left to others. For often science 
declares a law, which shall afterwards be found to be 
false. That is, science imagined that it discerned a 
certain generalization underlying a series of facts, 
and she formulated the law which was the expression 
of the generalization. Afterwards she discovered her 
error. That simply means that men sometimes fail 
in their interpretation of natural phenomena. For 
all humanly stated laws of Nature are but man's in- 
terpretation and description of Nature's processes. 

[177] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

To err therefore is not fatal. It simply means that 
men must gain more facts and study a deeper under- 
lying principle. 

This must be our experience in searching the truth 
about a potential after life, if we pursue the scien- 
tific method. If science forces the conclusion that 
there is no life at all beyond death; then as lovers 
of truth and humble students of the book of Nature 
we must be resigned and yield. But if Nature says 
that immortality is a fact and all shall live on in ad- 
vancing experiences, then, too, we must accept and 
be contented. And if, again, Nature should divulge 
the fact that, there being a potential life after death, 
nevertheless all shall not experience it, but only those 
in whom the integrating energy of self -consciousness 
and moral integrity shall prevail through the potency 
of character, then, whatever be the predilection of 
humanity it must yield to Nature's verdict. 

Now the problem is does Nature postulate, at least 
apparently, that if there be an after life it must be 
dependent on the potency of the self-conscious inten- 
sity and conservation of the human mind? 



[178] 



CHAPTER XXVI 

''The Puzzle of the Microcosm'' 

In the work already referred to, the facts there 
assembled led me to the logical deduction or general- 
ization that as all life is integrated in and expressed 
through the function of consciousness, and as the 
evolution of consciousness is traceable from the lowest 
suggestive phases in the feeblest forms of primitive 
life to the highest triumphs in man, the continuity of 
existence, if at all possible, must be commensurate 
with the increasing intensity or integrating energy of 
self-consciousness. 

In the eight years which have intervened since 
publishing that view I have learned of no facts that 
would compel its revision or retraction. There is no 
way of comprehending or measuring the possibilities 
of life save by means of the physical instrumentalities 
or media through which it is manifest. It is impos- 
sible to apprehend life as anything else than a mode 
of motion revealed in amenable forms of matter. ^ 

Insomuch as the analysis of the Cosmos reduces all 
things, at last, to the motions of ether in strains, or 
whirls, or waves, there seems to be no other possible 
conclusion, life itself being a form of activity, but 

^Physical properties and the manifestations of life, the whole world, 
even, offers nothing to the last analysis but motion. ... A 
single order of things now embraces life and the physical 
phenomena, for all the phenomena of the universe reduce to 
an identical mechanism, and are represented by atoms and the 
motion." (A. Dastre, Revue des Deux Mondes, 1898; see also 
Smithsonian Annual, 1898.) 

[179] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

that it, too, is a phase of the vibratory system of the 
universe. 

We discover, however, that Nature apparently se- 
lects the forms of matter through which her diverse 
and infinite systems of vibration shall manifest them- 
selves. We know that the identical form or phase of 
matter (that is the identical velocity of the vibration 
of her primary units) is not revealed in the soil and 
the seed; is not the same in inert rock or moving 
stream as in the leaf or flower or fruit; nor is the 
substance of the fruit identical with that of the 
trilobite or fish or bird; nor these the same as the 
substance that thrives in the organism of man. We 
may go even further and distinguish the differences 
existing between the various forms of matter even 
in a single organism; the differences resulting from 
the diverse demands of manifold functions. 

The same quality of matter is not found in the 
bone as in the blood; ui the tissue as in the cell; in 
the nerve as in the flesh; in the ganglia as in the 
brain. And we find even that there is a diversity of 
material substance in the departments of the cell 
itself; and in the different regions and sections of 
the braiQ. 

There seems to be a co-ordination of structure and 
quality between the divergent stages of consciousness 
from the lowest to the highest. For different phases 
of developing consciousness different and more com- 
plex organs seem to be required. Some physiologists 
(especially the German school, such as Haeckel, Max 
Verworn, Flechsig, etc.) seem to be able to trace the 
evolution of the gradations of consciousness almost 

[180] 



*'THE PUZZLE OF THE MICROCOSM'' 

from the primary atoms up to the ** mental organs" 
of the brain in animals and man. There is not only 
a gradational difference to be discerned in the struc- 
ture of the brain and nervous system as we ascend the 
scale of organic life, but there seems to be (according 
to Haeckel) a difference in the formation of the 
blood. ' 

In the gradations of what Haeckel chooses to call 
the ** psycho-plasm," by which he designates the ma- 
terial basis of the capacities or properties of living 
organism, up to the ''neuroplasm" (meaning by that 
term, the differentiated state of protoplasm which 
has -been adapted to nerve activities) and on to the 
gray matter of the cortex of the human brain, the 
diverse states of consciousness and the potentialities 
of the mind are, apparently, physically correlated. 
So that as the cell-composition becomes more and 
more complex, the substance of which the nerves and 
the cells are composed, as we ascend in the scale of 
organic life, becomes more refined, delicate and sen- 
sitive. 

''AH the peculiarities of the human soul," ex- 
claimed A. Forel, in 1877, "can be derived from the 
peculiarities of the higher animals." And in 1903 
he improved on the doctrine by declaring that "All 
the peculiarities of the souls of higher animals can 
be derived from those of lower animals. In other 
words, the doctrine of evolution is just as applicable 
in the psychical field as in the other fields of organic 
life." Psychical Faculties of Ants and Some Other 

2 The blood of mammals is distinguished from that of any other ver- 
tebrates by the circumstance that its red cells have lost their 
nucleus by reversion. (Riddle, p. 51.) 

[181] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

Insects. (See Proceedings Fifth International Zoo- 
logical Congress, Berlin. See also Smithsonian An- 
nual, 1903). 

Now, the distinguishing peculiarity of the higher 
animals is the property of self -consciousness. This 
phase of consciousness, has, then, arisen, by slow 
gradations from the similar ''peculiarity" or prop- 
erty of the ''souls" of the lower animals. And as I 
have said, commensurately with the evolution of the 
increasing intensity of the energy of consciousness 
there has been a development of the material substance 
through which it operates from simple or almost 
undifferentiated protoplasm to the high complexities 
of the cells of the human brain. 

Now the problem which we are confronting is this : 
Let us accept the hypothesis of the mechanistic biol- 
ogists, that what we call the soul and consciousness 
are inseparably associated with a specialized form of 
refined matter; which, however, may be a more deli- 
cate and sublimate phase of substance than the phy- 
sical basis of life, that is, "protoplasm." Shall we 
then be driven to the incontrovertible deduction that 
as "soul" and psychic matter are one and the same, 
when the psychic substance disappears in the decease 
of the animal, then there is an end of all existence of 
the individual? Surface appearance would certainly 
make such a deduction inevitable and final. 

But before we reach such a final deduction we are 
justified in seeking a more perfect understanding of 
the nature of that substance, which is known as the 
physical basis of life ("protoplasm") and especially 
the particular phases of protoplasm which are utilized 

[182] 



''THE PUZZLE OF THE MICROCOSM'' 

in the so-called psychic processes, namely, feeling, 
willing, thinking. 

That there is a mystery, an uncertainty, a problem 
associated with this so-called physical basis of life 
("protoplasm") is all too clear in biological re- 
search. There are those who seem to think that when 
the vital substance was discovered it solved the prob- 
lems relative to the origin of life, and having learned 
that it is of earthly origin, and every element of 
mystery was detached, its destiny afforded no more 
philosophical uncertainty than did that of a clod of 
earth. But those who have entered deeply and hon- 
estly into the search are farthest from the satisfied and 
assured. Indeed they begin to feel that instead of 
having reached a simple and easy solution of an an- 
cient problem, they have plunged into a deeper sea of 
mystery than they had yet encountered. ' ' The scien- 
tific method is the mechanistic method", exclaims 
Prof. Edmund B. Wilson, of Columbia University in 
a luminous address before the American Association 
for the Advancement of Science; yet he hastens to 
disarm the self-satisfied belligerent who thinks that 
having thus fortified himself in science his philoso- 
phical fortress is impregnable. For he admits that 
we have for it ''no proof whatever of its final val- 
idity." 

He durst not adopt the mechanistic method as a 
dogma for he knows not at what moment scientific 
honesty may compel its denial. 

Altogether more cautiously and less definitely does 
he, as well as Dr. Bateson and many others of the 
modern school of mechanistic biologists, approach the 

[183] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

problems involved in this discussion than does 
Haeckel, for instance, or Max Verworn, or any of 
the eminent leaders of German scientific philosophy. 
"The peculiar chemico-physical properties of car- 
bon," says Dr. Haeckel, without the least apparent 
conscientious scruple, ''are the sole and mechanical 
causes of the specific phenomena of movement, which 
distin^ish organic from inorganic substances, and 
which are called life, in the usual sense of the word" 
(see his ''Natural History of Creation" and "Rid- 
dle"). 

But there are those equally qualified, as eminent 
and successful in the same field as Haeckel, who are 
far from being as fearless and assured as is this dis- 
tinguished leader of German thought. "We know full 
well," humbly admits Dr. Wilson, "that our present 
mechanistic conceptions of animals and plants have 
not yet made any approach to a complete solution of 
the problems of life, Avhether past or present. ^ 

Therefore it is plain that science must make many 
century-strides yet, before it can feel assured that 
it has entered into the very inmost shrine of Nature 's 
mystery and torn the veil aside. We do not yet know 
positively what life is ; to know merely the substance 
that acts as the agent and expression of life's mani- 
festations does not necessarily make us acquainted 

3 As a reminder on this point I here cite again this passage: 
"It is important for the materialist to realize that his methods of 
experimentation cannot be extended to touch or test things of a 
purely psychical nature, and it is equally important for the 
psychologist to remember that he has only so far been dealing 
with materialistic models, and studying the substructure in which 
mental acts occur. Neither set of philosophers, whatever their 
beliefs may be, can prove or disprove anything as to the exist- 
ence of mind apart from matter, or what are subtle rela- 
tions of mind and matter." (Dr. Moore's "Origin of Nature 
and Life," p. 23.) 

[184] 



''THE PUZZLE OF THE MICROCOSM" 

with the actual nature and origin of life. Even the 
German school of mechanistic biology admits this 
when they go so far as to call for the conception of 
a special form of evolution of protoplasm which they 
designate as psycho-plasm. Why is not protoplasm 
sufficient, if it contains the potency of life ? Evidently 
something must have transpired in the history of 
this protoplasm to cause it to manifest such special 
properties as to regard it as something differentiated 
from the original substance and therefore to be called 
by a qualifying term. And what has transpired in its 
history that has qualitatively affected it? 

The problem at once arises whether it has been 
something which has been introduced into the orig- 
inal substance that has altered its properties and 
quality, or whether something inherently in it from 
the beginning has only in later epochs been privileged 
with the opportunity of revealing itself. ''I have 
confidence that the artistic gifts of mankind," says 
Prof. William Bateson, in a memorable address be- 
fore the Melbourne meeting of the British Associa- 
tion for the Advancement of Science," will prove to 
be due not to something added to the make-up of an 
ordinary man, but to the absence of factors which in 
the normal person inhibit the development of these 
gifts." 

According to this view all the genius of Homer, 
Dante, Milton, Shakespeare, Aristotle, Plato and the 
other glorious minds that have trodden Parnassus 
heights, was already inherent in the original dot of 
protoplasm that somewhere first evinced its existence 

[185] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

and properties on this t>lanet. This genius sprung 
from somewhere, but where or when none can tell. 

This is surely a purely metaphysical hypothesis 
without any possible ground of proof. It reminds 
one of the statement that Herbert Spencer made in a 
conversation with Prof. John Fiske, when he said 
that it was impossible for the human mind to con- 
template any problem of Nature without ending in a 
metaphysical hypothesis. 

It is probably true as Dr. Bateson says that the 
genius of Shakespeare was once embodied in a mere 
dot of protoplasm no bigger than a pin's point, and 
that *Ho this nothing was added that would not 
equally well have served to build up a babboon or g 
rat." For when the impregnating sperm of life that 
contained Shakespeare once found physical expres- 
sion, it was already Shakespeare with "the promise 
and potency" of all the triumphs of his genius. The 
only question still to be solved is where that speck of 
protoplasm called Shakespeare got its stuff which 
waxed so strong and fructified so wondrously. 

It is a commonplace among biologists that the far- 
ther they penetrate into the complex structure of the 
cell of life the profounder and more impenetrable 
becomes the mystery. 

''To judge by external aspects, individual develop- 
ment, like evolution, would seem to proceed from sim- 
ple to complex ; but is this true when we consider its 
inner or essential nature? The egg appears to the 
eye far simpler than the adult, yet genetic experiment 
seems continually to accumulate evidence that for each 
independent trait of the adult, the egg contains a co7^- 

[186] 



'*THE PUZZLE OF THE MICROCOSM*' ' 

responding something (we know not what) that 
grows, divides, and is transmitted by cell division, 
without loss of its specific character, and indepen- 
dently of other somethings of like order. Thus arises 
what I call the puzzle of the microcosm. Is the ap- 
pearance of simplicity in the egg illusory? Is the 
hen's egg fundamentally as complex as the hen, and is 
development merely the transformation of one kind of 
complexity for another?" (Italics by the author.) 
Thus boldly and almost betraying his own biological 
belligerents, Dr. Wilson, in the address to which I 
have referred, stated the insoluble, or at least un- 
solved, problem of the ages. 

In short there is a something in the living matter 
which not only differentiates it from all other matter 
in Nature, but which seems to be differentiated from 
the substance itself. Even the distinctive and un- 
qualified mechanistic biologists are apparently stalled 
by this fact. For it will be remembered that Haeckel, 
as it were, cuts the Gordian knot by insisting that in 
order to understand the secret and potency of the 
vital energy we must not pause at the manufactured 
or structural phase of protoplasm, but must look be- 
yond the microscope to an ulterior and more primitive 
phase, which is not only invisible to the microscope, 
but unamenable to human apprehension. In other 
words this thorough mechanistic materialist, and de- 
fiant monist, who scouts at hypothetical metaphysics, 
resorts, when driven into a cul de sac, to the very 
mysticism which he has so long scouted.* Haeckel 

*This is perhaps such a surprising statement to make of Haeckel's 
speculations that the uninformed might be led to doubt it J 
will therefore produce several quotations from Dr. Haeckel's 

[187] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

himself does not go the length of his possibilities, 
for he stops short with unstructural, iinmoleciilar, 
homogeneous, ultra-microscopical protoplasm. In my 
^'Psychic Phenomena, Science and Immortality" I 
have gone deeply into the investigation of the subject 
and shown how Haeckel has staked his reputation on 
the assurance of the existence of an ' ' invisible, hypo- 
thetical structure" which *4ies far below the limit of 
the microscopic perception" and ''must not be con- 
fused (as is often done) with the microscopically dis- 
coverable structure of the plasm." 

In short here is a field or plane of psychic exper- 
ience, whose substantial basis seems to be undiscover- 
able and can only be hypothetically postulated. It 
is the mystical plane in which all investigators sooner 
or later flounder and admit the bankruptcy of their 
mechanistic or materialistic philosophy. It is this 
''puzzle of the microcosm" as Wilson calls it, this 

"Wonders of Life", perhaps his profouiidest and most compre- 
hensive work, to satisfy those who may not have had their 
attention called to his theories. 

"The organs of the living organism perform their functions chiefly 
in virtue of their chemical composition. . . . This invisible and 
hypothetical molecular structure must not (as is often done) be 
confused with the real and microscopically discoverable structure 
of the plasm (30), Naturally this lack of a visible histological 
structure does not exclude the possession of an invisible mole- 
cular structure. On the contrary we are bound to assume that 
there is such a structure (34). . . . In thus declaring the action 
of bacteria to be purely chemical and analogous to that of well 
known inorganic poisons, I would particularly point out this very 
justifiable statement is a true hypothesis; it is an excellent illus- 
tration of the fact that we cannot get on in the explanation of 
the most important natural chemical phenomena without hypo- 
thesis. We can see nothing whatever of the chemical molecular 
structure of the plasm, even under the highest power of the 
microscope; it lies far below the limit of microscopic perception. 
Nevertheless no expert scientist has the slightest doubt of its 
existence." (203.) 

(All the boldface is mine.) Many other similar passages in the writ- 
ings of Haeckel could be quoted, showing how in the last analy- 
sis of the most important problems of life and Nature he resorts 
to ' 'pure hypothesis ; ' ' thus surrendering his strictly material- 
istic theory to simple metaphysics. 

[188] 



''THE PUZZLE OF THE MICROCOSM'' 

"undiscovered bourne," as we might call it, this will 
o' the wisp of illusion and tantalizing fascination, 
that has driven many of the later biologists into the 
ancient theory of vitalism, now almost a new school 
and denominated neo-vitalism, in contradistinction to 
the old school of Lamarck and others. 

It is indeed most interesting and not a little sug- 
gestive to read the following humble confession of a 
great scientist who had, as I have already noted, con- 
secrated himself to the worship of the mechanistic 
theory as the only scientific method, and yet stands 
bewildered, dumbfounded and amazed in the presence 
of the great enigma: "The theme that is here sug- 
gested tempts me to a digression, because of the clear 
light in which it displays the attitude of modern 
biology toward the study of living things. It is im- 
possible not to admire the keenness of analysis, and 
often the artistic refinement of skill (which so capti- 
vates us, for instance, in the work of M. Bergson) 
with which the neo-vitalistic writers have set forth 
their views. For my part, I am ready to go further, 
admitting freely that the position of these writers 
may at 'bottom he well grounded. At any rate it is 
well for us now and then to be rudely shaken out of 
the ruts of our accustomed modes of thought by a 
challenge that forces upon us the question whether 
we really expect our scalpels and microscopes, our 
salt-solutions, formulas, and tables of statistics to tell 
the whole story of living things. It is, of course, 
impossible for us to assert that they wilV (Dr. Wil- 
son's address as above.) (Italics by the author.) 

It is very clear that so far as the mechanistic 

[189] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

hypothesis has been brought to the test of present 
known facts, relative to the nature, origin and com- 
plex organization of vital energy, it has run up 
against a stone wall. More must be learned; a 
deeper penetration into the complex interior of the 
egg or organic unit of life, must be attained before 
this theory can be properly weighed in the balance of 
facts and its validity demonstrated or proved false. 
And even this, the hypothetical key to the entire 
mystery, may prove utterly futile, for as Dr. Wilson 
says, it may be that the eye of man will be forced 
merely to run upon complexity after complexity, and 
at length despair as it surveys a shoreless mirage of 
inexplicable mystery.^ 

However, it does not seem likely that that will be 
the final issue as the vast mass of Nature's mysteries 
have one by one divulged their secrets to the penetrat- 
ing mind of man in the past, and while an infinite 
congeries of mysteries must be expected in the en- 
counter with Nature's problems, past experience war- 
rants the belief and hope that each will ultimately 
give way as it is attacked by the scientific genius of 
man. 

It occurs to me that the mechanistic theory will not 

sprof. Ray Lankester says as to this issue: 

"The whole order of nature including life and lifeless matter, from 
man to gas — is a network of mechanism — the main features 
and many details of which have been made more or less obvious 
to the wondering intelligence of mankind by the labor . and in- 
genuity of scientific investigators. But no sane man has ever 
pretended, since science became a definite body of doctrine, that 
we know, or ever can hope to know or conceive the possibility 
of knowing, whence this mechanism came, why it is here, or 
whither it is going or what there may be or not be beyond and 
beside it, which our senses are incapable of appreciating. These 
things are not explained by science and never can be. ("King- 
dom of Man," 1907, p. 62, and London Times, May 17, 1903, 
taken from Thomson's "Bible of Nature," p. 234.) 

[190] 



*^THE PUZZLE OF THE MICROCOSM" 

need be surrendered and yet the issue, especially, as 
to possible future life may be unexpectedly contrary 
to what is now admitted. 

May it not be possible that a deeper penetration 
into the nature of not only the vital substance (proto- 
plasm) but that invisible, ultra microscopic plane of 
this substance, to which Haeckel has referred hypo- 
thetically, will divulge the secret which is now want- 
ing in the hypothesis to make it intelligible ? Let us 
address ourselves to this problem. 



[191] 



CHAPTER XXVII 

Life Energy and Subtle Forms 
of Matter 

Dr. E. B. Wilson in tis ''Cell and Heredity" has 
explained to us that the hypothesis of the natural 
evolution of vital energy, or life, on this planet in- 
volves also the hypothesis of the ultimate life units 
out of which all organic structures are evolved. Is 
it not apparent that until we have a better acquain- 
tance with the nature of this ultimate unit, howbeit 
it is merely a guess or hypothesis, we shall be at sea 
as to the real nature not only of life, but of conscious- 
ness and aU the psychic activities? 

Although the life units, from which visible struc- 
tural organic life proceeds, are invisible, and ultra- 
microscopical, we now know that there is, also, a plane 
of inorganic matter wholly invisible and microscopi- 
cal, and which is detectable by no known mechanical 
appliance, save one. Yet its existence is not a mere 
hypothesis, for an actual method of detecting its exis- 
tence has been procured. 

While the balance and all the delicate instruments 
of the laboratory have failed man in his pursuit after 
this will o' the wisp of matter, he has found a friend 
in the photographic camera. By the use of that 
agency he can detect the existence of this plane of 
matter, as he can detect the invisible stars of distant 
stellar systems. 

[192] 



SUBTLE FORMS OF MATTER 

In the physical field of "energetics" there has been 
discovered an ultra-microscopically invisible plane, 
where pure energy prevails, and matter has been re- 
duced to an imponderable and immaterial substance. 
While the more cautious physicists admit only with 
hesitation that the ultimate unit of matter is purely 
electrical, they do not deny it; whereas the more 
aggressive investigators admit without equivoeation 
that in the last analysis matter is electricity and noth- 
ing more. That is, matter is purely a plane of energy, 
and all we know of matter is the effect upon our 
senses, direct or indirect, of the dynamic energy 
which fills all space. . . . 

In the last analysis matter, we might say, consists 
of a series of shooting electrons, which reach out from 
the core or centre of the electrons, to vast distances.^ 
And these electrons are in the end but negative elec- 
trical charges. In their passage from the nucleal 
centre they produce certain distinctive effects upon 

^Rutherford ("Constitution of Matter"); "We have seen that a 
heavy atom is undoubtedly a complex electrical system consist- 
ing of positively and negatively charged particles in rapid 
motion. . . . Each atom contains at its centre a massive 
charged nucleus or core of very small dimensions surrounded by 
a cluster of electrons, probably in rapid motion, which extend 
for distances from the centre very great compared with the 
diameter of the nucleus." 

Sir William Orookes; "Modern Views of Matter;" "The fundamen- 
tal ingredient of which .... the whole of matter is made up 
is nothing more or less than electricity, in the form of an 
aggregate of an equal number of positive and negative charges 
of electricity. . . ." 

"Only the electron exists; it is an atom of electricity, and the words 
positive and negative, signifying excess and defect of electrons, 
are only used for the convenience of old-fashioned nomencla- 
ture. ..." "The electron appears only as an apparent mass, by 
reason of its electro-dynamic properties, and if we consider all 
forms of matter to be merely congeries of electrons, the inertia of 
matter would be explained without any material basis." Prof. 
H. 0. Jones: "What we know in the universe and all that we 
know is changes in energy. In order to have something to which 
we can attach the energy, we have created in our imagination, 
matter." ("Immateriality of Matter.") 

[193] 



THE CHALLENGE OP THE WAR 

manifest matter, among these being that of electrify- 
ing the air, so that it becomes a conductor of elec- 
tricity ; of penetrating solid substances, so that opaque 
matter becomes transparent; of photographing ob- 
jects by the light of its own substances or rays, and 
lastly of phosphorescence. 

At the present time science has been absorbed in 
its investigation of the various forms of energy re- 
sulting from the electrons, that escape from the de- 
composing atom, but, as far as I can learn, very 
little or nothing has been studied in the way of dis- 
covering how far this phase of energy is related to 
life, and whether the apprehension of the nature of 
electrons, and the energy they emit, may not throw 
a considerable light upon the subject of vitalism, 
psychism, the nature of thought and consciousness, 
and ultimately on the problem of the possible exist- 
ence after death/ 

So far as I know I have thus far been the only 
author who has tentatively and, of course timidly, 
attempted anything of the kind (see Psychic Phenom- 
ena, Science and Immortality). In my former work 
I undertook to elaborate the subject; and as it ap- 
pears to be of such importance and exhibits the 
promise of removing much mystery from many prob- 
lems I shall here again present it, with, I trust, some 
re-enforcement. 

It is manifest that all the marvels in Nature re- 
sulting from the action of the electrons are owing 

2 Since writing the above my attention has heen called to Dr. Albert 
Abrams' work "New Concepts in Diagnosis and Treatment," 
where some reference is made to the invisible plane of energy 
emanating from the human body. (Vide., pp. 223-228.) 

[194] 



SUBTLE FORMS OF MATTER 

chiefly to their velocity. These electrons at times 
attain a velocity almost approaching that of light 
(186,000 miles per second), although some of the 
rays move as slowly as ten thousand miles per second. 
The effect in the ether and upon different substances 
is owing to the impact of these small particles, mov- 
ing at such a high rate of speed. 

The electron itself seems to have something of the 
nature of colloidals; that is, of affecting other sub- 
stances, without itself being affected by the action. 
This we know is the great distinguishing feature of 
the substance known as protoplasms, the physical 
basis of life. The electron (the electrical unit) be- 
gins to manifest its energy only when the atom splits 
up and shoots off its electric ingredients. When the 
atom begins to decompose it at once transforms the 
chemical properties of the substance. "A body whose 
atoms have been partly dissociated is necessarily dif- 
ferent from the same body before dissociation." (Le 
Bon.) 

When inert substances enter into this colloidal state 
they assume properties that are almost like those of 
organic bodies. They succeed in changing their most 
fundamental properties.' 

Now this wonderful transformation in the charac- 
teristics and attributes of these substances is owing 
wholly to the fact that dissociation has set in.* 

That is, this peculiar quality of colloidal metals 
which makes them act in some respects like living 

» * 'They take on properties so intense and peculiar, so different from 
those which they possess in an ordinary state, that we can only 
compare them to certain organic compounds called diastes." 
(Le Bon.) 

*"In my opinion the metal is found in the state of matter that has 
suffered the commencement of dissociation." (Le Bon.) 

[195] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

bodies, strangely affecting other substances without 
themselves being affected by the results, being ex- 
tremely sensitive, and subject to the effects of toxins 
or poisons, even to that of disease and death — all 
this, according to this investigator (and I believe 
never disproved by any other) is owing to the fact 
that in such metals the atoms are splitting up and the 
electrons are being released so that they shoot out 
with their tremendous velocity. 

Manifestly the strange result must be the effect of 
the internal impact of the shooting electrons upon 
the structure of the substance. In short, because of 
the escape of the electrons from the atom, inert mat- 
ter is able to take on some of the qualities of living 
matter. Here at once is a remarkable and most sug- 
gestive fact in connection with what is now known 
as the dissociation of matter. It is also to be noted 
that this quality, namely the colloidal, is a distin- 
guishing feature of protoplasm, or the substance 
known as living matter. 

From the experiments, then, conducted on inert 
metals, in which colloidal results have been procured, 
wherein it is shown that they follow from the decom- 
position of the atomic unit, it must follow by analogy 
that the same result is attained in protoplasm, or 
living matter, because of the same circumstance or 
condition, namely, the decomposition of the atomic 
unit of which the protoplasm is composed. 

It seems, then, clear that, as protoplasm is charac- 
terized by colloidal properties, and as such properties 
result only from the decomposition of the atom (at 
which time radio-active energy is released), there- 
[196] 



SUBTLE FORMS OF MATTER 

fore, radio-activity must be a chaj^acteristic energy 
of protoplasm. 

If we keep clearly in mind that radio-activity con- 
sists in the release of millions of infinitesimal electri- 
cal particles, called electrons, from the atom when it 
is breaking up, then we may imagine that living mat- 
ter is continually in this state of ceaseless disintegra- 
tion or internal bombardment. 

Minute, almost incomputably infinitesimal particles 
are hypothetically shooting forth from the nucleal 
core of the protoplasmic unit, and thus generating 
around it the tremendous energy known as radio- 
activity. 

Will the chemical science of the future discover 
that this energy (thus generated internally in the 
dissociation of the essential unit of living matter, 
protoplasm) is the real source of life itself, which 
in inorganic matter reveals itself with peculiarly 
constituted powers ? It would seem that modern lab- 
oratory experimentation is leading in this direction.^ 

^ "There exists a whole territory of approach between the inorganic 
and the organic in what is known as the chemistry of the col- 
loids. . . . The study of the colloids has not only had profound 
effects upon our philosophical conceptions of chemistry; it is pro- 
ducing enormous changes in many fields of industry, for colloids 
are amongst the most important of the chemical substances util- 
ized by civilized man, and in the future the study of the colloids 
found in living structures will revolutionize our knowledge of 
biology and physiology, and cause astounding advances in the 
applied medical sciences." (Moore's "Origin of Nature and 
Life," p. 18, 19.) 

This author also quotes Thomas Graham as saying: "The colloid is 
in fact a dynamical state of matter; the crystalloid being the 
statical condition. The colloid possesses Energia. It may be 
looked upon as the probable primary source of the force ap- 
pearing in the phenomena of vitality." (p. 19.) 

"The importance of these slow energy changes in colloids, . . . . 
giving rise to phasis variations in the energy processes of the 
living cell, are only now somewhat tardily receiving the atten- 
tion and the further study which they so richly deserve. Many 
of the hidden wonders of the cell life undoubtedly are clustered 
around the relationship of the colloid and the crystalloid." (pp. 
157, 158.) 

[197] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

But first we must call attention to another vital 
characteristic whose similar existence in brute matter 
or inert metals is at least suggestive. I refer to the 
fact of phosphorescence. 

Phosphorescence is a quality of matter that gives 
out strong white light, shines brilliantly, without the 
presence of heat (that is, without combustion) . This 
seems to be a characteristic that reveals itself always 
in the decomposition of the atom when radio-active 
energy is generated. 

When in 1879 Professor Crookes first stood amazed 
before a vacuum tube through which he had passed 
an electric charge of a very low pressure he was wit- 
nessing a scene that has revolutionized modem phys- 
ics, dynamics and chemistry. He saw a stream of 
daintily colored particles flowing through the vacuum 
with such startling velocity that it took nearly a quar- 
ter of a century to determine its nature. It was 
proved as Crookes had originally surmised that **the 
rays consisted of a stream of negatively charged par- 
ticles traveling with enormous velocities from 10,000 
to 100,000 miles a second. ... In addition it was 
found that the mass of the particle was exceedingly 
small, but one eighteen hundredth of the mass of the 
hydrogen atom, the lightest atom known to science." 
(Rutherford.) 

Now, as to the phenomenon of phosphorescence. 
''These (Crookes') rays excited strong phosphor- 
escence in many substances in which they fell and also 
produced marked heating effects." 

Without, for the moment, dwelling further on the 
fact of phosphorescence as a phenomenon accompany- 

[198] 



SUBTLE FORMS OF MATTER 

ing that of the disintegration of the atom, or the pres- 
ence of radio-activity, I wish to emphasize the fact 
that phosphorescence seems to be a special and fixed 
characteristic of protoplasm or living matter. Now 
this would seem to be a further proof that there exists 
within protoplasm a condition of atomic dissociation, 
or bombardment of myriad particles of infinitesimal 
diameters. 

In my ** Psychic Phenomena, Science and Immortal- 
ity" (pp- 66-71), I have aggregated numerous illus- 
trations and facts to show that phosphorescence prob- 
ably is a constant phenomenon accompanying proto- 
plasm. It would therefore possess the second distin- 
guishing characteristic of radio-activity, or the phe- 
nomenon of the disintegration of the atom, that is, 
the internal bombardment of carelessly impacting 
particles of negative electricity. 

Now it is an accepted fact that the implements 
of the chemical laboratory^ — the salt solutions, the 
scalpels, the balances, etc. have never been able to 
detect the illusive secret of the nature of life. I have 
already cited the assertion of Dr. E. B. Wilson to 
that effect: ''It is the puzzle of the microcosm''. . . . 
"once within we are stalemated with respect to the 
origin and the early history of life." 

It would seem that there are no chemical reagents 
that enable the scientists to detect and run down the 
real truth about the origin and nature of protoplasm. 
While the chemical elements which enter into proto- 
plasm may be detected, the why and the wherefore, 
the real law which compels the union of these chemi- 

1 [199] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

cal elements to generate life is not yet discovered, and 
seems far away from discovery. 

Perhaps the hint of Le Bon may be as true relative 
to the problem of the life unit as it claimed to be 
true relative to the reactions that occur in radio-ac- 
tive substances when dissociation of the atom begins. 
He insists that ''Ordinary chemistry touches only 
the structures formed by atoms and modifies them at 
will. . . . The intra-atomic chemistry of the future 
will attempt the study of the phenomena which take 
place within the atoms." 

He, with many others, is now claiming that the old 
formulas, and solutions and microscopes and statis- 
tics of chemistry are utterly valueless in the greater 
and far more profound discovery which is yet to be 
made, if we are to understand the worlds of wonder 
that lie discoverable within the potency of the atom 
itself. ''Reactions having for their probable origin 
beginnings of atomic dissociation suffice to give bodies 
absolute novel properties which none of our chemical 
reagents can detect," says Le Bon ("Intra- Atomic 
Energy"— Smithsonian Annual, 1903, p. 284), "and 
which were revealed only when new phases of physi- 
cal investigation were discovered. ' ' 

Now the two startling characteristics to which Le 
Bon refers as transformations in the properties of 
matter when subject to atomic disintegration are col- 
loidal attributes and phosphorescence. The fact to 
which I here attempt to call attention, and again em- 
phasize, as I did in my former work, is that these 
properties are also the very two puzzling and start- 
ling characteristics or properties of living matter, 

[200] 



SUBTLE FOEMS OF MATTER 

and which have thus far refused to submit their se- 
crets to the keen minds of investigators. 

Are we then correct in assuming that the real state 
of protoplasm or living matter is one of radio-activity 
or atomic disintegration, which would mean that it 
is ceaselessly releasing streams of infinite particles, 
electrical in nature (electrons), which activate the 
functions of the vital substance, and as I shall try 
further to show are probably at the basis of con- 
sciousness and all the vital forces? 

Is it not probable that this is the field of the hypo- 
thetical, ultra microscopical plane of protoplasm, re- 
ferred to by Haeckel? It is from this fact that I 
have ventured to deduce what I might call the elec- 
tronic theory of life and thought, which I think, if 
true, would bear very strongly on the problem of the 
after life, and especially lend itself to the explica- 
tion of the many confusing psychic problems in hu- 
man experience. 



[201] 



CHAPTER XXVIII 

The Electron Theory of Thought 

For some time it has dawned on many thinking 
minds that thought is not something mysterious and 
supernatural in origin but really a force or energy 
much like other planetary forces. It is a dynamic 
principle. It affects results; it accomplishes work. 
If we could understand more of the nature of this 
force, of its method of activity and its permanent 
effect on this life and a possible life hereafter, it 
might add much to human information and earthly 
possibilities. This venturesome effort I shall now 
undertake. 

That thought is some kind of energy closely allied 
to a complex form of matter seems now to be admitted 
by physiologists. The cell, by some, is regarded as an 
electro-magnet and thought, electro-magnetic energy. 
The very seats in the brain, especially the gray mat- 
ter of the brain, constituting the various thought- 
centres, are also claimed to have been discovered by 
some authorities. And in these seats of thought the 
energy is released which manifests itself in what we 
call the process of thinking. The energy, thus ex- 
pended in thought, is generated in the living matter 
of cell. 

"This much at least is certain," says Dr. Andrew 
Wilson, "that the living matter of the brain cells is 
the seat of those particular changes and actions aris- 

[ 202 ] 



THE ELECTRON THEORY OF THOUGHT 

ing from the play of the nerve force, which can be 
converted into force or energy of other kinds. . . . 
We have thus arrived at the conclusion that the brain 
cell is the seat of those actions or processes which are 
generally spoken of under the name of thought or 
consciousness. ("Physiology of the Human Body," 

p. no.) 

The organization of the brain and the nervous sys- 
tem is so constituted, we are assured by authorities 
as we have already noted, that they are meant for the 
conveyance of vibrations, only, and not for the carry- 
ing of any substance whatever. 

Just as electric wires are contrived only as a 
medium for the conveyance of the electric current 
and its conversion into some other form of energy in 
practical application ; so the brain cells and the fibres 
and nerves are a complex organization for a similar 
purpose, namely, the conveyance of energy over the 
nerves to the muscles, where they are converted into 
actions, or through the specific brain centres where 
the vibrations are converted into thought and con- 
sciousness.^ 

The brain cell, then, in certain of the cranial cen- 
tres, is the generator of thought; that is, within this 
cell, certain energies are at play which originate only 
in the living matter of the cell, and become mani- 
fested in our psychic activities. 

The point that is of particular importance to us 
in this discussion is that this form of energy is gen- 
erated in the living matter of the cell, that is, in the 

^"Here it would seem that we stand on fairly firm ground, assum- 
ing that the brain cell is a generator of that particular kind of 
energy, to which in one of its manifestations, at least, we apply 
the name of 'thought.' " (Dr. Andrew Wilson, p. 111.) 

[203] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

pure protoplasm, which in the last analysis we have 
already seen is not the detectable, microscopical sub- 
stance commonly known by that name, but an ultra- 
microscopical, hypothetical and invisible element re- 
siding in the undiscoverable depths of protoplasm. 

This is the hypothetical chemical plane of vital 
substance as already stated, wherein because of the 
disintegration of its ultimate units there is a constant 
emission of electrical particles or radio-activity. Is 
not the kind of energy, then, generated in the brain 
cell, to which Dr. Andrew Wilson refers, to be re- 
garded as radio-active ? In the last analysis, thought 
apparently may be regarded as a phase of radio- 
activity, and so construed would lend itself to the 
explanation of many of the puzzling phenomena in 
the psychic experience of mankind. 

Thought thus construed would have to be recog- 
nized as an energy or force of a very powerful charac- 
ter. It is quite possible that we might here discover 
the plane of electro-magnetism, where the psychic 
processes are always at play, that very plane which 
Soddy told us we are almost whoUy incapable of real- 
izing, any more than a fish can realize the air. There- 
fore we are puzzled when any of the phenomena of 
this realm manifest themselves obectively, and things 
occur that we cannot understand. Here, may it not 
be, lies the secret of those strange phenomena, that 
have so long either been denied as possibilities or 
relegated to the supernatural because nobody could 
explain them. 

If we once understand that the form of energy 
which is released in thought and consciousness is 

[ 204 ] 



THE ELECTRON THEORY OF THOUGHT 

identical or similar to that known as radio-activity, 
and recognize the marvels of this energy when re- 
leased in the physical world, we shall perhaps be able 
to apprehend the source of the phenomena called psy- 
chic, which operate in a field outside of consciousness. 

What is called radio-active energy is electrical in 
Nature ; it consists of the ceaseless expulsion of myr- 
iad streams of electrons from the atom which is 
breaking up. May it not be possible, then, that the 
electron theory of thought will show that thought 
operates in a field of electro-magnetism? As Soddy 
says: ''A charge of electricity, or electrons at rest, 
has no magnetic properties. A current of electricity, 
or the same electrons in motion has." (' 'Matter and 
Energy," p. 172.) (Italics by the author.) 

From certain psychological laboratory results 
which it is claimed (as I shall shortly show) have 
been obtained, such as the alleged scientific photo- 
graphing of objects by thinking of them, and similar 
results which the chemical laboratory have secured 
through physical agencies, it would seem to me that 
there is marked evidence at hand, that a thought 
is really a process of radio-active action, or a ray of 
electrons in motion. Not to anticipate, if it can be 
shown that a substance which emits radio-active rays 
can by those rays cause the photographing of an ob- 
ject covered by a black cloth, or through an opaque 
surface that absorbs light (and this experiment has 
been scientifically demonstrated beyond all dispute) ; 
and if it can also be proved, as it is claimed, that the 
mind is capable of securing the photograph of a physi- 
cal object, merely by strongly thinking of it, even 
when that object is buried under a black cloth; then 
[ 205 ] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAE 

manifestly the result in each, incidence must be the 
effect of the same or similar form of energy. 

A ray of some kind (that is, a stream of invisible 
electrons) must emanate from the mind or will, when 
contemplating an object, if it is photographed by 
thought. As in the chemical experiment that ray is 
not luminiferous, but emerges from a metal that is 
radio-active, so it would seem to follow that the brain 
cells, too, are radio-active, or at least emit a rare 
and extraordinary form of energy, and by means of 
the invisible rays of the cells the photograph is 
secured/ 

I give at this juncture merely the hint of what I 
am attempting to show as to the possible electronic 
nature of thought and shall soon return to it for 
more elaborate presentation. 

And further if the electronic theory of thought 
should be found to be true, namely, that thoughts 
are electrons in motion, then manifestly the entire 
zone of mental action, by the definition of Soddy, must 
be magnetic, or electro-magnetic in nature. From 
this fact, in the psychic realm, I believe a world of 
revolutionary deductions can be made. 

It is not to be overlooked that we are led to this 
supposition through the deduction already presented, 
that the living substance of the human organism, pro- 
toplasm, contains radio-active energy, evinced by its 
colloidal and phosphorescent properties. Therefore 
the brain cells must of course be activated by the 
same energy. 

2Dr. Larkin of Mt. Lowe Observatory doubtless is correct when he 
says the word photography, applied to these phenomena, is erron- 
eous. "Photos" means light and "graphe" writing, both Greek 
words. But the graphs or pictures were not taken by light. 

[206] 



THE ELECTRON THEORY OF THOUGHT 

All authorities in Physics and the Science of Elec- 
tricity acknowledge the phenomenon of the accom- 
paniment of phosphorescence with the emission of 
radio-active energy. But I know of none who has 
applied the manifestation of the phenomenon to the 
laws and potency of protoplasm. I am taking the hint 
set out by Le Bon that the phenomenon of phosphor- 
escence always takes place when the atom explodes 
and emits its streams of electrons (that is, rays of 
radio-active energy). The existence of phosphores- 
cence and radio-activity are concomitant. Where 
radio-activity exists there is phosphorescence; and 
where phosphorescence is manifested there we have 
the phenomenon of radio-activity, resulting from the 
disintegration of the atom. 

Therefore as protoplasm is admittedly accompanied 
by a phosphorescent illumination, would it not follow 
that it is activated by radiant energy? In short, the 
energy that is inherent in the protoplasm, which exists 
and functionates on the invisible plane antecedent to 
the vitalistic phenomena, which are the properties of 
protoplasm, is apparently radio-active. Is not this, 
then, the ultra-microscopical, and hypothetical chemi- 
cal plane of activity, which actuates the protoplasm, 
and which is primarily responsible for the properties 
of vitalism? 

Haeckel and others, I have already stated, admit 
the existence of this plane of ultra-microscopical 
energy, but they call it hypothetical, merely declar- 
ing it must exist for logical reasons.^ 

^Dr, Leonard Thompson Troland, says in "The American Natur- 
alist," (August 1917) "It has for some years been my con- 
viction that the conception of enzyme action, or of specific 

[207] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

However, if we discern tlie fact that protoplasm 
is actuated by radio-active energy, which is the result 
of the disintegration of the ulterior protoplasmic unit, 
namely the atom, then we have reached a plane in the 
history of protoplasm which places it at the culmina- 
tion of the analysis and evolution of inert matter. It 
removes protoplasm from any mysterious association 
or metaphysical antecedence, by putting it on a com- 
mon plane with all cosmic matter;* and merely sug- 
gests the fact that when radio-activity functionates 
in vital substance, that substance acquires properties 
which are wholly different from those of all other 
forms of matter. But this is no more mysterious than 
is the fact that when this same phenomenon of radio- 
activity takes place in gross matter it creates proper- 
ties in such matter that are utterly contradictory of 
its ordinary and historic characteristics. 

catalysis, provides a general, definite solution for all the fun- 
damental biological enigmas; the mysteries of the origin of 
living matter, of the source of variation, of the mechanism of 
heredity and ontogeny, and of general organic regulation. ._. . 
It is an answer, moreover, which links these general biological 
phenomena directly with molecular physics, and perfects the 
unity not alone of biology, but of the whole system of physical 
science, by suggesting that what we call life is fundamentally 
a product of catalytic laws, acting in colloidal systems of mat- 
ter throughout the long periods of geologic time. . . . This view 
implies no absurd attempt to reduce every element of vital 
activity to enzyme action, but it does involve a reference of all 
such activity to some enzyme action, however distantly removed 
from present activity in time and space, as a necessary first 
cause. Catalysis is essentially a determinative relationship and 
the enzyme theory of life as a general biological hypothesis, woixld 
claim that all intra-vital or 'hereditary' determination is, in 
the last analysis, catalytic." ... 

Ostwald defines a catalytic agent as "a substance which changes 
the velocity of a re-action without itself being changed by the 
process. In the older terminology of the pioneer Berzelius, it 
is 'a substance which, merely by its presence and not_ by its 
affinity, has the power to render active affinities which are 
latent at ordinary temperatures.' " (Also quoted in "The 
Literary Digest," August 25, 1917.) 

* Dr. Moore seems to hint this fact in the following statement: "The 
brink of life lies not at the production of bacteria and protozoa, 
which are highly developed inhabitants of our world, but away 
down amongst the colloids, and the beginning of life was not a 

[208] 



THE ELECTRON THEORY OF THOUGHT 

This seems to be a field of study that promises a 
real discovery; namely, that protoplasm is a product 
of colloidal or radio-active energy, and being such the 
secret source of its marvels may soon be discovered, 
to the extent of divulging the origin of the energy 
by which such marvels are made possible. 

This discovery would not only remove much from 
the mystery of vitalistic phenomena, and reveal the 
ulterior source of structural and microscopic proto- 
plasm, but it would establish a ground for the theory 
that thought and consciousness, or the higher func- 
tions of protoplasm within the complex nervous or- 
ganism of living animals, are actuated by the same 
energy, and thereby prove the dynamic principle of 
thought or ideation, and lend themselves to the fur- 
ther explanation of the confusing phenomena which 
are exhibited on the psychic plane. 

If the secret power of thought and consciousness, 
no less of sub-consciousness, be the radio-active en- 
ergy, that lies at the core of the universe, then we 
have a far reaching principle or law which may enter 
into the plane of these mysterious activities and very 
largely explain their source. 

Utilizing the principle of the radio-active or elec- 
tron theory of thought and consciousness, accom- 
panied with the probable truth that these activities 

fortuitous event occurring millions of years ago and never again 
repeated, but one which in its primordial stages keeps on re- 
peating itself all the time and in our generation. . . . The fact 
that the present basis of the system of living creatures in the 
world is light energy, leads to the view that at a certain stage 
in the development of the colloids, probably long before the 
appearance of chlorophyll, the colloids began to be affected by 
the light, and acquired the property of retaining and utilizing 
light energy for the further development of structure, or, in 
other words, synthesis of more complex colloids." ("Origin 
of Nature and Life," 191, 192.) 

[209] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

are exercised in an electro-magnetic plane of matter, 
we may easily investigate every one of the phases of 
so-called psychic phenomena with the assurance that 
they will probably lend themselves to the final ex- 
planation of this far-reaching hypothesis. 

I believe that the further investigation and test of 
this principle in connection with the marvellous 
claims made by spiritists and psychics will show that 
they bear no relation whatever to the world of spirits 
or anything contrary to the discovered laws of mat- 
ter, but are amenable to the same planetary laws of 
existence. All this I have attempted in detail in my 
former work, already often referred to in this trea- 
tise. 

But what I am emphasizing here is the fact that 
what I have set forth in the present treatise is more 
positive and confident, more in the nature of a prob- 
able discovery, than what I felt assured of when I 
wrote the former work. For, once we establish the 
truth that thought is a form of radio-active energy 
and functions in an electro-magnetic plane of matter, 
then we have principle enough to show how all the 
wonders of so-called psychism may take place, with- 
out in the least referring them to the agency of 
supernatural beings or spirits. At least until the 
hint here presented is fully tested with relation to 
these phenomena we are not justified in looking else- 
where for their origin. 

This analysis and theory of thought would lend 
itself likewise to an explanation of the human will. 
It would be found that a thought or an idea entering 
the brain, certain groups of cells will organize as a 

[210] 



THE ELECTEON THEORY OF THOUGHT 

frame for it and streams of electrons will rush from 
those cells to activate the nerves that lash the muscles 
into action. That is, a distinctive form of energy 
would eventuate that we call will-power, or volic 
energy. 

Naturally this interpretation, if true, will enable 
us to understand and explain what is called thought- 
transference or telepathy ; for that would be nothing 
more than the action of the electrons surrounding an 
idea sweeping from one brain to another and assem- 
bling in the second brain the similarly located cells 
that would awaken in it the identical or similar idea 
that proceeded from the first brain. 

The theory would explain thought as dynamic and 
thus explain so singular a phenomenon as stigmata 
which sometimes occurs spontaneously but may also 
be caused by Hypnotism. 

There are authentic cases on record of certain nuns 
having been so enamored of the Christ, and thus gave 
their lives in such devotion to the worship of the 
crucifix, that upon their breasts were formed actual 
red reproductions of the cross, which have been called 
stigmata. 

Now in the case of the nun, during the days of 
ignorance, because no better explanation could be 
found, it was assumed that the effect was purely 
supernatural and an answer to her devout prayers. 
But insomuch as this same condition can be caused 
in the clinic by the suggestion of an hypnotic oper- 
ator, it becomes manifest that the phenomenon is not 
at all supernatural, but the result of a partially 
known cause. However, merely to say that the effect 

[211] 



THE CHALLENGE OP THE WAR 

is mentally produced is really hardly an explana- 
tion. For we have no way of understanding how the 
thought of a hypnotic operator can create such a 
physical and objective result, unless we know more 
of the nature of thought. 

Now, I contend, that the electron theory of thought 
makes such a phenomenon easily understood. For if 
thought is an energy of radio-active quality, and 
operates in a field of electro-magnetism, then it is 
endued with that specific dynamic property that 
would enable it to manifest itself in the manner de- 
scribed. The idea or thought if sufficiently strong 
and clear would carry a stream of electrons toward 
the object contemplated, and the result would follow. 
The nun, becoming so absorbed in the contemplation 
of the crucified Lord, so clearly in vision realizes 
his agony and physical condition that the idea of 
crucifijKion fixes itself in expression upon her own 
breast. 

Psychological fiction through the genius of Haw- 
thorne has been made the instrument of conveying a 
picturesque portrayal of this rare experience in hu- 
man history. In his ''The Scarlet Letter," when 
Rev. Mr. Dimmesdale who is secretly guilty with 
Hester Prynne of the greatest sin in the Puritan's 
eyes, makes his sensational confession, Hawthorne has 
him speak as follows: ''There stood in the midst of 
you one at whose brand of infamy and sin you did 
not shudder. ... It was on him," he continued in 
a kind of fierceness, so determined was he to to speak 
out the whole, " — God's eye beheld it. The angels 
were forever pointing at it ! The Devil knew it well 
and fretted it continually with the torch of his bum- 

[212] 



THE ELECTRON THEORY OF THOUGHT 

ing finger! . . . Now at the death hour he stands 
before you. He bids you look at Hester's scarlet let- 
ter. He tells you that with all its mysterious horror, 
it is but a shadow of what he bears on his own breast, 
and that even his own red stigma is no more than the 
type of what has seared his inmost heart. Stand any 
here that question God's judgment? Behold a dread- 
ful witness of it!" 

With a convulsive motion he tore away the minis- 
terial band from before his breast. It was revealed ! 
.... Most of the spectators testified to having seen 
on the breast of the unhappy minister a SCARLET 
LETTER — the very semblance of that worn hy Hes- 
ter Prynne IMPRINTED IN HIS FLESH. As re- 
gards its origin there were various explanations. . . . 
Some contended — and those best able to appreciate 
the peculiar sensibility of the minister and the won- 
derful operation of the spirit on the body — whis- 
pered their belief that the effect of the ever active 
tooth of remorse, gnawing from the inmost heart out- 
wardly , and at last manifesting Heaven's dreadful 
judgment by the visible presence of the letter." etc. 

I have italicized certain passages to indicate how 
excellently Hawthorne, even so many decades ago and 
long before the new psychology had an existence, sug- 
gested the true reasons for the frightful experience 
of the minister which revealed itself physically in so 
sensational a manner. 

Modern psychology shows Hawthorne was correct 
in his intimation that it was the inward remorse 
gnawing outwardly which caused the blood to print 
in red letters on the minister's breast the identical 
duplicate of the letter on Hester's breast. It was the 
gnawing of remorse; that is, the ceaselessly painful 
contemplation of the red letter on her breast subcon- 

[213] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

sciously suggested to him that he, equally guilty, 
should be shamed as well as she, and wear, too, the 
same letter of infamy. As we say in psychological 
terms it was the physical manifestation of the mental 
suggestion ; an exhibition of the motor power of idea- 
tion. 

But does that fully explain it ? Is it not necessary 
that we go further and discover what instrument, 
that is, what physical medium, the motor power of 
ideation, or the action of suggestion, utilizes in pro- 
ducing the marvellous physical effect? 



[214] 



CHAPTER XXIX 

The Dynamic Energy of Thought 

It is impossible to understand how an idea or a 
thought can act in a vacuum. There must be some 
sort of material medium through which a thought 
operates to affect a physical result. It is right here 
where such a theory as that of the electron-theory of 
thought becomes efficient to explain the mystery. If 
the thought is embodied in a stream of electrons, 
pouring forth with persistent energy, we can conceive 
of such a stream, organized in the mould of a red 
letter, *'A," forcing the blood outwardly from the 
veins and, by friction upon the flesh, reproducing the 
red letter on the breast of the minister. Some physi- 
cal medium must be discovered, which is operating 
coincidentally with the action of the mind, to make 
the psychological law of *' suggestion, " hypnotism, 
etc., intelligible. Unless thought is substantial, em- 
bodied in some form of matter, we cannot understand 
how it moves, acts or works. 

We will at once appreciate the difficulty if we con- 
template the force of electricity. For a long time it 
was regarded as a fluid or current of some myster- 
ious substance; but more recently it was defined 
merely as a mode of motion. Science temporarily 
paused, satisfied with such a definition. Nevertheless 
the mind was unsatisfied; for if electricity is a mode 

[215] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

of motion, there must be something in which or by 
which it accomplishes its movement. 

Not till the discover}^ of the electron was there an 
approach to an intelligent definition and understand- 
ing of electricity. It was merely accepted as a mys- 
tery and let go at that. It is even now the stock-in- 
trade illustration of the theologian when cornered and 
asked to explain the mystery of the soul, God, etc. . . . 
He says that these mysteries are no greater than that 
of electricity and science accepts such a mystery as a 
matter of course. But Science, nor even the human 
mind, ever rests satisfied with mystery as the goal of 
investigation. So when the electron was discovered 
the mystery of electricity was to that extent unveiled, 
and now electricity is recognized as a stream of shoot- 
ing corpuscles or electrons, whose energy is deter- 
mined by the degree of the velocity of the stream. 
There is no vacuum in Nature. Crookes learned that, 
when he directed a current of electricity through a 
vacuum tube, reduced to the millionth of an atmos- 
phere, and beheld the marvellous revelation of the 
flying corpuscles occupying the vacuum! 

As electricity does not operate in a vacuum but 
must be clothed with some substance; so must it be 
with thought, and the mental energies. They too 
must be substantial and act through matter. Of 
course they cannot be supposed to be embodied in the 
coarse substance of the flesh or even the microscopic 
cell, except indirectly. 

It seems to stand within reason (having already 
shown, by the indication of the colloidal nature of the 
living matter of the cell, and by its phosphorescent 

[216] 



THE DYNAMIC ENERGY OF THOUGHT 

character) that this living matter must be radio-active, 
and that therefore the cells of the body are surrounded 
by this rare substance known as ''radiant matter." 
This consists as already said of shooting rays of elec- 
trons of various velocities and penetrating all sub- 
stances. If this be true, then we can understand how 
a thought or volition moves in the action of the stream 
of minute particles. This theory would explain the 
manner in which thought as a mode of motion operates 
as well as electricity.^ 

Naturally there are some difficulties connected with 
the theory but if it is true these will in time doubt- 
less be overcome. 

In the same manner the theory may lend itself to 
the explanation of clairvoyance. This is still a mys- 
tery and an attempted explanation only has been 
given out by calling it telepathy. But telepathy must 
be scientifically accounted for as well as clairvoyance. 
I will recite here an interesting case of clairvoyance 
which was narrated to me by a southern friend to 
show how the theory may explain it. 

My friend had been corresponding with an inti- 
mate friend of hers and had completed arrangements 

1 Might not this theory tend to explain the modern operation in the 
generation of such phenomena as vouched for by Dr. Lucien 
L^rkin which he describes in an article. He claims to possess a 
vivid graph of an iron ring, a brass clock wheel with cap, and 
a 50-cent silver coin, taken in total darkness by radium ore 
from a Nevada mine. A sensitive photographic plate, new from 
factory, was wrapped, in a dark room, in heavy black paper. 
The powdered ore was sprinkled over another paper and then 
was laid on top of the ring, wheel and coin, keeping these be- 
tween ore and plate. The whole was placed in a black box. 
■ After a few days the plate was developed and intense negatives 
appeared. "The Baraduc and Darget graphs were secured when 
the subjects were swayed by varying emotions, in calm, peace 
and serenity and also when in anger. This is a whirl around 
the head; an actual brain storm." 

I am not quoting this as scientifically authentic — but merely what 
it may be worth as a suggestion. 

[217] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE TVAE 

for a visit. She had been expectantly awaiting the 
hour of her arrival, having set mnch importance on 
the visitation she had so mnch desired. Her friend 
had told her that she wonld arrive on a certain dav 
and all day long she sat waiting for her arrival ; but 
great was her disappointment not to see her at all. 
She concluded the plan had been in some way upset. 
So she strolled out on the roadside in the dusk of the 
evening when, to her tremendous amazement, she did 
indeed see her friend approaching, but,, strange to 
say, she turned hastily into a lane and then disap- 
peared. My friend ran quickly to find her but could 
not. One thing m particular, however, she observed 
in the moment's glimpse of her friend. She was 
clothed in a brilliant red suit: a garment she had 
never seen her clad in. and it was very attractive. 
She of course could not understand the seem in gly in- 
sane performance and awaited an explanation of the 
sight which had so pained her. In a day or so came 
a letter from her friend t-elling her how greatly dis- 
appointed she was because of the interference with 
her plan and the impossibility of mak in g the visit. 

Then my friend was more confused than ever and 
wrote explaining to her what she now knew must 
have been an apparition she had witnessed on the 
day her friend herself was to arrive. She spoke 
especially of seeicg her in. a beautiful red gown, a 
style she had never known her to wear. 

Then came a letter from her friend teHiag her 
that indeed she had that day worn such a dress and 
had been expecting to surprise her, knowing how much 
she liked pretty apparel, etc. The secret was out I My 

[218] 



THE DYNAMIC ENERGY OF THOUGHT 

friend had really seen her intended visitor, only she 
came in a mould of substance that was surely not of 
the earth earthy. Of course she had seen her spirit; 
in short she had had a clairvoyant vision. 

To explain this by merely saying that it was a tele- 
pathic vision transmitted from the mind of the 
proposed visitor to the mind of my friend, which, 
under the peculiar strain of expectancy, was espe- 
cially intense, and therefore visualized itself in ap- 
parent objective manifestation, is, indeed to explain 
by an explanation that demands an explanation. For 
the reason at once demands an understanding of how 
the thought could be so transmitted. 

On the basis of the electron theory of thought a 
legitimate and scientific explanation could be estab- 
lished. For if thought is conveyed, perhaps like elec- 
tricity, in streams of electrons that radiate from the 
human brain, they might be carried forward to other 
brains and, as by impact, compel in the recipient 
brain the grouping of cells similar to those in the 
transmitting brain. By this the thought or idea would 
be visualized to the latter mind as well as to the for- 
mer. So called table turning, spirit photography, and 
the multitude of alleged psychic phenomena can, it 
seems to me, be thus naturally explained as the result 
of a law now discovered. As I have elaborated this 
subject in great detail in my ''Psychic Phenomena, 
Science and Immortality" I will use no more space 
here but refer the reader, if interested, to that work. 



[219] 



CHAPTEE XXX 

Thought Photography and Spirit 
Identity 

I have already referred to the possibility of thought 
photography. If it be true that it has been actually 
demonstrated as a scientific fact, as seems to be the 
case with the work of Commandant Darget, then we 
may speak of thought photography as a real phenom- 
enon; although if it be merely yet an undemon- 
strated possibility, nevertheless it is legitimate to 
study whether there are any laws in Nature that lend 
themselves to such a potential phenomenon. And it 
occurs to me that the very theory I am attempting 
here to propound, the electron theory of thought, 
immediately lends itself to such an explanation. If 
science is already admitting the possibility of thought 
photography then it is close upon the track of the 
actual nature of thought itself. According to the 
interpretation of the electron theory, thoughts would, 
indeed, be discerned as things. If they are things 
they must be capable of analysis and apprehension. 

Physicists have explained to us that the recently 
discovered energy known as radio-activity, while at 
first thought to be generated alone in radium, which 
is a very rare and expensive article, is now actually 
known to be one of the commonest of all the forces in 
Nature. We learn that around every inert and or- 
ganic body of matter there is a charge of radio-active 

[220] 



THOUGHT PHOTOGRAPHY AND SPIRIT 

energy, which, though, of course invisible and not 
even detectable by the chemist's delicate balances, yet 
is one of the most penetrating and intense of all nat- 
ural forces. It is, indeed, ''radiant matter,'' as 
Crookes has called it, though really without any of 
the properties of ordinary matter, except mass, but 
possessing properties, as I have already stated, com- 
pletely contradictory to those of gross matter. It 
consists of small electrical particles, nearly two thou- 
sand of which are needed to compose a single atom 
of hydrogen, the lightest of all the known chemical 
elements. 

Yet invisible, imponderable and impalpable, as they 
are, they are subject to the magic grasp of the photo- 
graphic plate. Indeed it was chiefly through the aid 
of the camera that scientists came to realize their 
existence and possibilities. 

A celebrated Frenchman has performed wonders 
with them, within the camera; such wonders as are 
more amazing than any of the alleged marvels of 
spiritistic seances.^ 

Now by hypothesis this marvellous ''radiant mat- 
ter," these electrons, not only surround all the ex- 
ternal objects in Nature, but they move round the 
brain cells and sweep down the nervous wires through 
the human organism. We might therefore in imagi- 
nation almost picture to ourselves the form of a 
thought. Just as when you plunge a string in a 
solution of salt the string will speedily be surrounded 
by crystals that cling to it when dried, and may thus 
be seen ; so every ceU and nerve in the human system 

1 Vide Le Bon's "The Evolution of Matter," Passim. 

[221] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

is, hypothetically, surrounded by these minute, won- 
derful electrons ; and especially the cells of the brain. 
For here the highest degree of energy is released, 
as the brain must function in all the body's activities. 

Now, we have been heretofore supposing, that in 
the act of thinking or in any state of consciousness 
we utilized the specialized group of cells devoted to 
the function. But we are beginning to understand 
that in the thought-process we are utilizing a much 
more refined and sublimate substance than that of the 
minute cells. 

The mind, by this hypothesis, does not act directly 
on the brain and the cells and the nerves, but on a 
much finer substance. The action of the will is exer- 
cised directly through the medium of "radiant mat- 
ter," or streams of electrons, a substance which exer- 
cises tremendous energy on the coarser and less re- 
sponsive substance of the microscopic cells. 

When a bell strikes we hear a sound ; but the sound 
does not pass directly from the striking beU to the 
ear; it passes through a stratum of ether, and it is 
the vibrations of the ether thus energized that effect 
the tympanum, and cause us to hear. 

Thus, likewise, when we think or exerecise the 
power of the will, the thought or volition does not by 
our hypothesis directly affect the nerve or brain cell ; 
what the energy of our thought and will does is first 
to set up particular groups of vibrations among the 
electrons that surround the nerve and the brain- 
ceUs and through the energy thus directed causes the 
functioning of the muscles and the organs. By this 
hypothesis the will-energy resides and moves in the 

[222] 



THOUGHT PHOTOGRAPHY AND SPIRIT 

body of electrons or radiant matter that surrounds 
the cells and nerves. 

By our hypothesis thought is the energy of an idea 
taking specific shape among the myriad electrons that 
surround the brain cells. A thought then would have 
shape, form, figure — ''a local habitation and a 
name. " It is not only a ' ' thing, ' ' but it is an appre- 
ciable and apprehensible object ; not opaque, it is true, 
not visible, not even microscopically detectable. Yet 
it is actual. 

But how is it possible, it will be asked, if these elec- 
tronic forms are actual, that they cannot be detected ? 
I have not said they cannot be detected; I said not 
*' microscopically detectable;" for indeed they can be 
detected. While they are beyond the apprehension 
of all known chemical instruments, there is one in- 
deed to which they yield, and that is the plate of the 
photographic camera.^ Physicists have demonstrated 
the fact that the aura of electrons, which surround 
material objects, can actually be seized by the camera. 

Just as invisible stars can alone be detected through 
photography, so this impalpable and invisible auric 
environment of physical substances can be caught 
only on the photographic plate. 

Now does it not stand to reason that if these aura 
on external objects can be seized in the camera, then 
some process should be capable of invention whereby 
the auric environments of the brain cells (that is, the 
shapes and figures of thought which we have just sug- 

21 do not refer here to the detection of individual electrons, a feat 
which has been, I believe, accomplished by Professor Millikan 
in observing an electron coursing down a globule of oil. I 
refer to the groups and aggregation of electrons in specific forms 
which are discovered only by the camera. (See "The Electron" 
by Robert Andrews Millikan.) 

[ 223 ] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAE 

gested as actual in the brain centres) can also he 
caught and retained in the camera? And this it 
would seem is the actual explanation of the manner 
in which the photographs of thoughts can be taken. 

But let us extend the possibilities of our hypothesis 
even further. If it be true that thoughts are actual 
things, that is (if I may so put it at once) actual 
figures composed of ''radiant matter," and these 
supposedly can be photographed within the brain, 
why would it not also be possible to detect and photo- 
graph them outside the brain? 

Is there any scientific reason for us to believe that 
thoughts, when full formed may, to put it vulgarly, 
walk outside the brain and, for at least a brief space 
of time, maintain their integrity ? This is a problem 
which will some time be tackled by competent scien- 
tists and finally solved. Meanwhile let us see how 
far present experiments have led toward its solution. 

By the hypothesis I have thus far stated, thoughts, 
being forms composed of electrons or radiant matter, 
manifestly do move from one brain to another, for 
we have the demonstration in hypnotism of mere 
mental conditions of the operator affecting the condi- 
tions of the subject without the assistance of any phy- 
sical agency. 

In such experiments it is manifest something passes 
from the brain of the operator to that of the subject. 
By our hypothesis what passes is the stream of elec- 
trons, organized into a formal thought, between the 
two brains. It is the passage not of a mere epi-phe- 
nomenon, a mere imaginary being, an inexplainable 
spiritual something; but it is the passage of a sub- 

[224] 



THOUGHT PHOTOGRAPHY AND SPIRIT 

stantial actuality, an organized body, something as 
actual as a ray of light that is generated in the lumini- 
ferous ether or a current of electricity that leaps be- 
tween synchronous batteries. It is not a mere fig- 
ment of the imagination ; but it is an actual reality. 

Now, if, by hypothesis, the radiant figure (a 
thought) can be photographed in the brain, then, as 
by hypothesis, when a thought is telepathically com- 
municated, it means the passage of the actual form 
or figure of the thought outside of the conscious brain, 
why could not such a thought-form be photographed 
in the passage ? Such a photograph would, of course, 
be what is now regarded as a spirit photograph, and 
which has so long been utterly denied, as a possibility, 
or accepted as a supernatural phenomenon. 

Such a story for instance as here follows, though I 
am not sure that it was ever scientifically verified, 
would be, if interpreted by my hypothesis, not a 
supernatural manifestation, but a simple, natural phe- 
nomenon, easily explained by the principles of science. 
This story was sent from London by cable March 20th 
1916 and printed in the American papers March 21st. 
I take my record from the N. Y. Times of that date. 

''Special Cable to the New York Times 
LONDON, March 20, — The claim to have photo- 
graphed a ghost is made by the Rev. Charles Twee- 
dale, Vicar of Weston, Yorkshire, in an affidavit made 
before the Commissioner of Oaths, which is supported 
by Mrs. Tweedale and their son. Mr. Tweedale, who 
a few years ago attracted attention by reports of 
psychical phenomena at the Weston vicarage, told the 
correspondent of The Yorkshire Post that on Dec. 20 
last his wife, their son, and himself were at luncheon 

[225] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

about 1:30 o'clock in the afternoon when suddenly 
his wife cried out that she saw the apparition of a 
man, with a full head of hair and beard, standing at 
the other side of the table to the left hand of their son. 

Mrs. Tweedale directed attention to the figure, but 
neither the vicar nor his son could distinguish it. 
Crying out hastily to his wife to keep it there, al- 
though on reflection he admits he does not know how 
Mrs. Tweedale could compel the figure to remain, he 
rushed off into an adjoining room and picked up his 
camera. Fortunately this was loaded with quarter- 
plate slides, and without a moment's delay he re- 
turned to the morning room where they were at 
luncheon. 

The vicar then placed the camera on a window-sill 
and focused it up the room, the distance between the 
camera and the position where his wife still said she 
saw the figure being about three and a half yards. 
The light not being very favorable for an interior 
picture he gave an exposure of twenty-five seconds. 
Mrs. Tweedale described the figure as that of a little 
man, and said the top of his head appeared to be 
about on a level with their son's shoulder. 

Mrs. Tweedale and the boy continued sitting at the 
table during the time the plate was being exposed. 
The resulting negative appears to have corroborated 
Mrs. Tweedale 's vision. Mr. Tweedale explained that 
he personally developed the plate shortly afterward 
and it had not left his possession in the meantime. 

The negative which was shown to the reporter by 
the vicar is of quarter-plate size and reproduces the 
corner of the morning room. In the foreground is 
the dining table, the white cloth of which reflects the 
light into the corner. Sitting at the table is Mr. Twee- 
dale 's son and opposite him toward the edge of the 
plate, there is a shadowy but distinct impression of 
the head and shoulders of a little old man, with abun- 
dant hair and flowing beard. 

[226] 



THOUGHT PHOTOGRAPHY AND SPIRIT 

The figure, which appears to be in a semi-incum- 
bent position, almost hides that part of the furniture 
•and a piano, which lies behind it, and this, in Mr. 
Tweedale's opinion, conclusively proves that the ap- 
parition had definite objectivity, although invisible to 
the normal vision of himself and his son. In response 
to the suggestion that the camera may have played a 
trick upon him, the vicar said he had carefully exam- 
ined conditions as they were at the time. The camera 
is in perfect order and the plate was taken from a new 
box of quarter plates and had not been previously 
exposed. No person of similar appearance ever had 
been photographed by him and none of the family 
recognized the figure disclosed on the negative. His 
wife, he said, clairvoyantly saw the figure which she 
described, and upon the sensitive plate being exposed 
a figure was disclosed and was recognized by Mrs. 
Tweedale as being like the man she saw." 

Of course, I am not pretending to avouch the truth- 
fulness of this narrative. I can easily see the pos- 
sibility of error or fake in the publication and the 
alleged experience. All I wish to call attention to is 
that granting the actuality of such a phenomenon, it 
need not be regarded as supernatural or beyond hu- 
man explanation, for science seems to be approaching 
an explanation along some such avenues as I have 
indicated by the electron hypothesis of thought. And 
incidentally I might point out that a slight circum- 
stance in the narrative, as cabled, would perfectly 
accord with the theory. 

It will be observed, the reporter states that the 
vicar *' cried out to his wife to keep it there, though 
on reflection, he admits, he does not know how Mrs. 
Tweedale could compel the figure to remain," etc. 

[ 227 ] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

But upon my theory that is precisely the feat which 
Mrs. Tweedale could accomplish. For if the figure 
was nothing else than the radiant form of thought,' 
which had been organized in her mind (the thought 
could have been organized unconsciously as well as 
consciously), then, by keeping her attention close 
upon it, intensifying its visualization, she would ac- 
tually have been able to detain it "in the air" till the 
plate of the camera seized it. 

Certainly some such explanation is far more within 
the natural methods of the universe, within the ration- 
al possibility of physical agencies, than the theory that 
a ghost, an inexplicable and incomprehensible crea- 
tion, had suddenly manifested itself, and accomodated 
its hosts long enough for them to catch a picture of it. 
I will shortly present the argument that indicates 
the application of this theory of thought to the pos- 
sibility of an after life. But before doing so I should 
like to acquaint the reader with the fact that there 
seems to be a growing scientific disposition thus to 
interpret ghosts and psychic manifestations, without 
recourse to supra-natural agencies or supernatural 
spirits. 

A careful distinction must be drawn between the 
theory of the perambulance of discarnate spirits, 
who, some believe, throng the invisible atmosphere, 
and are ever ready to communicate with us mortals, 
and the existence of impalpable thought-forms, the 
lingering remains of departed souls which may ever 
invade our minds. There is a vast difference be- 
tween the invasion of thoughts and the rending of the 
veil by the return of a spirit form. 

[228] 



THOUGHT PHOTOGRAPHY AND SPIRIT 

We know that in our normal lives thoughts pass 
from mind to mind. With the normal activity of 
thought we are familiar and it requires no miracle 
or wonder to acquaint us with the experience. There- 
fore we can easily understand how if a thought re- 
mains as an entity, or a lingering yet permanent 
form of vibration in the ether, it may affect us as 
the waves of sound or light affect our optic or olfac- 
tory nerves. It seems from the facts and deductions 
drawn in this work that the existence of thought- 
forms in the invisible ether may be hypothetically 
accepted as a reality. We can easily appreciate such 
a possibility if we contemplate the workings of the 
force of heredity in human life. Heredity, that is, 
the descent of characteristics that are germinally im- 
planted in the human system, can be nothing more 
than the continuant impression of thoughts that once 
existed in one 's ancestors, either living or dead ; what 
has descended from one's parents or forebears is the 
thought energy that shapes itself in disposition, tem- 
perament, or idiosyncracy, or perchance visibly dis- 
ports itself in feature or physical form. If it were 
not for the thoughts that have descended to us we 
would not only not think as we do, but we would not 
act or feel or achieve as we do in the various occupa- 
tions and evolutions of life. If then an invisible 
thought can flow down from an ancestral source into 
the blood and tissue of a new bom being, and ma- 
terially affect it in its future career, it may easily be 
apprehended how if thoughts linger after the death of 
individuals as actual entities in invisible ether, these 
thoughts may attack sensitive and susceptible souls 

[229] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE -WAR 

who will as it were echo them back into conscious 
expression. (I am purposely avoiding here any ref- 
erence to the debatable ground of hereditary-,, ac- 
quired characteristics.) 

But such a possibility is a vastly different thing 
than the continued existence of a complete personality 
which returns to communicate with us in a fashion 
similar to the customary associations of human be- 
ings. There has not yet in my judgment been pre- 
sented a sufficient number of facts to demonstrate 
such a reality. All that we can say, at best,, that has 
come back is now and then a wandering sentence or 
thought, which is just what would occur if the re- 
turn of thought were possible. For it must not be 
forgotten that if we accept all the communications 
said to have come through the alleged mediumship 
of Mrs. Piper and others, what we have at best is 
a re-constructed personality begotten in the subcon- 
sciousness of the medium, and portrayed in dramatic 
form. Precisely the same thing happens to every 
one of us every night that we sleep and dream. A 
lingering reminiscence occurs to the sleep conscious- 
ness and the sudden recurrence of such a memory 
begets at once a dramatic stor^' which is woven out 
in beautiful or frightful dream-form, yet which is 
after all but the creation of the superlatively active 
imagination. Only so much of the dream is true as 
pertains to the reminiscence or thought that im- 
pinges on the dream-brain — the rest of it is all fic- 
tion generated by the imagination to which the re- 
curring thought gives rise. 

When we consider this fact — (the extraordinary 

[230] 



THOUGHT PHOTOGRAPHY AND SPIRIT 

capacity of the sleep-consciousness to awaken imagi- 
nary forms that take on all the verisimilitude of 
reality, which are themselves suggested to the dream- 
mind by the impingement of a reminiscence) we can 
easily understand how a thought remaining over from 
the life of one departed, might awaken in the trance- 
mind of a medium all the dramatic portrayals that 
were divulged in the messages of Mrs. Piper or the 
wonderful results of Prof. Flournoy's medium, so 
happily narrated in ''From India to the Planet 
Mars.'' 

Because an organized thought-form professes 
through a medium to be a personality by no means 
makes the claim a fact ; for beside the thoughts com- 
municated it is encumbent on the medium to prove 
the identity of the professed personality, which has 
thus far been quite an impossible achievement. One 
of the reasons why the achievement will always be 
impossible is because of the lying disposition of 
thought-forms expressed through the medium 's brain ; 
the tendency to deceive the dream-consciousness, 
which we always experience when we dream. In our 
dreams we are forced to believe that the personalities 
that confront our consciousness are what they profess 
to be; but when we awake we discern, if we can re- 
call the dream, that they were all but figments of the 
mind, configurations wrought by the imaginative fac- 
ulty of the dream-brain. In like manner the trance- 
brain of the medium dramatically portrays to her 
trance-consciousness thought-forms that claim to be 
distinctive personalities, yet which may be nothing 
more than imaginary beings wrought from the im- 

[231] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

pressions the mind or presence of a sitter may make 
upon her buried consciousness. 

One may, therefore, accept the hypothesis of the 
continuity of thought-forms, and even of spirit-per- 
sonalities, without at the same time being compelled 
to accept the hypothesis of spirit return or the gen- 
uineness of spirit communion. Even though the per- 
sonality may survive we have yet no proof that such 
personality may communicate thoughts to the dwellers 
in the flesh; for as far as we have been able yet to 
discover all the communications are but repetitions 
of thoughts once existing in the minds of those who 
at one time dwelt on the earth ; and, palpably, if they 
communicate other thoughts, then we are unable to 
determine that the personality sending such thoughts 
is the same as it may pretend to be, namely, a spirit 
of one who once dwelt on earth. Here is the great 
bridge to be crossed in the problem of psychic phe- 
nomena; and until the evidence of identity can be 
demonstrated to be absolute or at least as convincing 
and conclusive as what is demanded in a court of jus- 
tice, we do not seem to be justified in accepting any 
alleged proofs of such intercommunications. 

Sir Willaim Crookes, whose wonderful experiences 
have defied the whole scientific world, has himself 
reached the same conclusion. 

Hon. Alexander Aksakoff, of St. Petersburg, the 
well-known philosopher and Psychical Researcher, 
published in the Spiritualist journal, '* Light," Lon- 
don, May 12, 1900, an old letter of Sir William 
Crookes, written to a lady who requested his personal 
views on his results thus far achieved. In this letter 

[232] 



THOUGHT PHOTOGRAPHY AND SPIRIT 

Sir William specifically disavows all conviction of 
having attained the identity of any of his spirit com- 
mnnicants in any of his adventures. This letter is 
dated Aug. 1st, 1874, at 20 Mornington Road, London. 
He says: 

''Madame: — It is with regret that I can hold out 
no hope of your receiving the satisfactory proofs you 
require by any means at my disposal. To ^^ the 
identity of a deceased person' has been the chief ob- 
ject I have had before me for the last three or four 
years, and I have neglected no opportunity myself 
on that point. I have had almost unlimited opportun- 
ities of investigation, more so than perhaps any other 
man in Europe. . . . During the whole time I have 
most earnestly desired to get the one proof you seek — 
the proof that the dead can return and communicate. 
I have never once had satisfactory proof that this is 
the case. I have had hundreds of communications 
professing to come from deceased friends, but when- 
ever I try to get proof that they are really the in- 
dividuals they profess to be, they break down. Not 
one has been able to answer the necessary questions 
to prove identity ; and the great problem of the future 
is to me as great a mystery as it ever was. All I 
am satisfied of is that there exist invisible intelligent 
beings who profess to be spirits of deceased people, 
but the proofs which I require I have never yet had ; 
although I am willing to admit that many of my 
friends declare that they have actually received the 
acquired proofs, and I myself have been very close to 
conviction several times." 

This is, of course, merely the opinion of one great 
scientist on the actual results of his adventures in 
the occult; doubtless it can be offset by statements 
equally strong by other scientists and it may be 

[233] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

justly said that at the present time more can be 
found, like Sir Oliver Lodge, who insist that they 
have tunnelled their way through the dark mountain 
that rears between the country of the living and that 
of the dead; yet we believe none has shown the cau- 
tion, the total absence of predilection and antecedent 
religious bias that Sir William has, and in the light 
of this unprejudiced and free investigator the proof 
of identity cannot be said to have yet been attained. 
Perhaps no living thinker is better capacitated to 
sum up the actual results of these far-reaching re- 
searches than the poet-scientist, Maurice Maeterlinck, 
who approaches the subject with sufficient kindly 
sympathy to avoid offence even to the devoutest be- 
liever in spirit communion. Yet even he, after dis- 
passionately reviewing the substance of the labors of 
the eminent scientists, philosophers and psychologists 
who of recent years have given so much of their time 
to these investigations, says: 

"Now, what are we to think of it all? Must we, 
with Myers, Newbold, Hyslop, Hodgson, and many 
others who have studied this problem at length, con- 
clude in favor of the incontestable agency of forces 
and intelligences returning from the farther bank of 
the great river which it was deemed that none might 
cross? Must we acknowledge with them that there 
are cases ever more numerous which make it impos- 
sible for us to hesitate any longer between the tele- 
pathic hypothesis and the spiritualistic hypothesis? 
I think not. I have no prejudices — what were the 
use of having any in these mysteries? — no reluc- 
tance to admit the survival and the intervention of 
the dead; but before leaving the terrestrial plane, it 
is wise and necessary to exhaust all the suppositions, 

[234] 



THOUGHT PHOTOGRAPHY AND SPIRIT 

all the explanations, there may be discovered. ' ' (Cen- 
tury Magazine, 1913.) 

Maeterlinck concludes that all the phenomena may 
be explained, as Flournoy long ago insisted, as psy- 
chological processes void of all association with dis- 
carnate spirits. 

**0f a truth, by extending the possibilities of the 
medium to these extremes, we furnish ourselves with 
explanations which forestall nearly everything, bar 
every road, and all but deny to the spirits any power 
of manifesting themselves in the manner which they- 
appear to have chosen." 

However, he is not prejudiced against admitting 
that the phenomenal forms that present themselves 
on occasions, consist of some sort of substance, how- 
ever ephemeral and transitory. In this admission he 
is quite in accord with the hypothesis advanced in 
my own previous treatise heretofore referred to.' He 
says, **It appears to be well established as a fact can 
be that a spiritual or nervous shape, an image, a be- 
lated reflection of life, is capable of subsisting for 
some time, of releasing itself from the body, or sur- 
viving it, of traversing enormous distances in the 
twinkling of an eye, of manifesting itself to the living, 
and sometimes of communicating with them. They do 
not seem to have the least consciousness of a new or 
superterrestrial life, differing from that of the body 
from whence they issue. On the contrary, their spiri- 
tual energy, at a time when it ought to be absolutely 
pure, because it is rid of matter, seems greatly in- 
ferior to what it was when matter surrounded it." 

A far more confident view, however, is boldly pro- 
claimed by Sir Oliver Lodge, President of the British 

^"Psychic Phenomena, Science and Immortality," (Passim.) 

[235] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

Association for the AdTancement of Science, in Ms 
official address before that bodv, September. 1913, 
when he savs: 

'•Althongh I am speaking ex cathedra, as one of 
the representatives of orthodox science. I wiH not 
shrink from a personal note siTmni arizing the resnlt 
of my own mind of thirty years' experience of psy- 
chical research, begun without predilection: indeed, 
with the usual hostile prejudice. ... In justice to 
myself and to my coworkers I must risk annoying 
my present hearers not only by leaving on record our 
conviction that occurrences now regarded as occult 
can be exam in ed and reduced to order by the methods 
of science carefully and persistently applied, but by 
going further and saying, with the utmost brevity, 
that already the facts so examined have convinced me 
that memory and affection are not limited to that 
association with matter by which alone they can man- 
ifest themselves here and now. and that personality 
persists beyond bodily death." 

Of course it required no such courage for Sir Oliver 
to relieve himself of his conviction before the austere 
body of scientists whom he addressed as burdened 
the heart of Sir William Crookes who. first of aU the 
world's great scientists, startled the same body 
almost fifty years ago by similar declarations. The 
difference between the two eminent scientists, regard- 
ing the results of their experience of psychical mat- 
ters, lay in this : Sir Oliver insists that these results 
make positive evidence for the continuance of per- 
sonality beyond the grave, while Sir TVilliam was 
only willing to declare the amazing facts, and leave 
to future generations of scientists the interpreta- 
tion of their meaning and prophecy. 

[236] 



THOUGHT PHOTOGRAPHY AND SPIRIT 

Sir Oliver manifestly believes that the experiences 
of these researchers have proceeded so far since Sir 
William's assertions, that he may now afford to be 
positive whereas his predecessor was haltingly and 
cautiously tentative. 

Of course the millions reared in the customary be- 
lief regarding the future life will accept Sir Oliver's 
declaration as final scientific deliverance on the sol- 
emn problem, and proclaim that even physicists have 
been forced to corroborate the belief of the ages by 
their scientific deductions. 

The more thoughtful, however, will still halt and 
ask of Sir Oliver if what he regards as conclusive 
evidence is such in the light of all the facts. How 
much are his deductions colored and forced by the 
traditional beUef which inheres in his religious con- 
victions ? 

Furthermore, how far do the facts which he him- 
self has experienced prove identity and actual com- 
munication of post-mortem personalities? How can 
he be positive that the "personalities" are not the un- 
conscious creatures of the trance-brain of the medium 
who acts as the bridge between the living here and 
the alleged living there? Here is the crux of the 
problem ; and until science can positively demonstrate 
the identity of the personality that claims to commun- 
icate, it is still in the dark. This demonstration, it 
seems to me, is scientifically still wanting. Many 
people will, however, easily prove to you that they 
have had such experiences which positively prove the 
identity claimed. However, I, at least, have never 
heard or read of one such experience that could not 

[237] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

be explained as easily on the theory which I have else- 
where set forth in more elaborate form, as on the 
theory of the return of the spirit of one who had de- 
parted. 

We are yet all too ignorant of the nature, power and 
pertinacity of thought-force, to declare that by the re- 
turn of a thought to an earthly individual we have 
the proof of the existence of a disembodied spirit that 
speaks to those still living on this planet. We have a 
vast deal to learn relative to the physics of thought as 
of its psychology, before we can determine so large a 
problem as that of the continuity of a personality 
beyond death and the capacity of such personality 
to afford earthly evidence of its actual exist-ence. It 
seems to me that the field of psychical research is at 
present logically restricted to the evidence and inter- 
pretation of thought energy and thought manifesta- 
tion, and not until it solves all the problems relating 
to the nature and possibilities of thought, is or can 
science be prepared to declare itself finally on the 
problem of the after existence of human mortals or 
their possible communication with inhabitants of this 
earth. 

Nevertheless, though the efforts of the psychic re- 
searchers may not yet demonstrate the actual exist- 
ence of disembodied spirits or the possibility of their 
communing vrith the living, the results have no nega- 
tive effect on the scientific problem of the after life. 
Nowhere has science yet disproved the future exist- 
ence of the soul, however it may have failed positively 
to have demonstrated it. Certain scientists of emi- 

[238] 



THOUGHT PHOTOGRAPHY AND SPIRIT 

nence, it is true, have personally delivered themselves 
of negative convictions^ but these must always be 
regarded as the statements of their own beliefs and 
not the absolute and unmodifiable conclusions of 
science itself. 



[239] 



CHAPTER XXXI 

Sir Oliver Lodge and "Raymond" 

Recently, however, Sir Oliver Lodge, who is the 
most persistent and serious of the searchers after 
results in psychic experimentation, has given to the 
world in the shape of a very large book, narratives 
purporting to be communications from the alleged 
spirit world that would seem to compel the modifi- 
cation of the conclusions I have thus far drawn. 
Merely because I am not so married to a theory, 
even though my own, that I am incapable of divorce- 
ment from it, I here gladly present the facts for 
which Sir Oliver vouches, and shall undertake to 
put them under the search light of careful analysis 
and interpretation. 

Sir Oliver is so convinced of the genuineness of all 
the communications which he has received from nu- 
merous spiritistic mediums, both private and pro- 
fessional, that he has been completely captured by 
the theory of spirit communication, and is apparent- 
ly unwilling to consider any other. The facts to 
which I am now to refer are found in his recent 
volume called "Raymond, or Life and Death." 

It is but becoming to say that one hesitates to at- 
tempt to remove from the minds of those who mourn 
their lost ones any hypothesis which seems to afford 
them comfort, as Sir Oliver's theory seems to, both 
for himself and his entire family, after the slaying 

[240] 



SIR OLIVER LODGE AND '^RAYMOND" 

of their brilliant and promising son, Raymond, in 
the war. 

However, scientific pursuit should not be permit- 
ted to halt, lest truth be beclouded merely because 
of the delicacy of sympathetic feeling. 

I shall not of course be able to review the many 
alleged communications which were received and 
published in this book, nor indeed would that be 
necessary; for it may be said with absolute justice 
that there is not a single communication there re- 
ported which seems to afford evidence for the pres- 
ence of the alleged spirit which could not as easily 
be explained on the theory I have above hinted at, 
namely, that the medium's mind (unconscious, of 
course, was played upon by some lingering thought or 
series of thoughts that roamed about and impinged 
upon her trance or subconscious organism. If one 
will but read all these communications with the theory 
in mind that the medium is unconsciously represent- 
ing in dramatic form, as in a dream, the impression 
which an alleged spirit-personality is making upon 
her, one will see how beautifully the theory works 
out. 

Let us take for instance a rather complicated com- 
munication, purporting to come from Raymond, 
through the Medium, Mrs. Leonard ("Feda"). 

Sir Oliver Lodge is sitting and it is he who writes 
and comments on it in the book. Where the initials 
are used they refer to Sir Oliver. The answers are 
given by "Feda," the medium's spirit name, or con- 
trol. The communication is alleged to have come 

[241] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

from Raymond, and his identification is established 
to the satisfaction of Sir Oliver by it. 

"0. J. L. — Is that the end of what yon want to 
say yourself? 

Yes 
0. J. L. — Well then, now I will give you one of the 
boys' questions, but I had better explain that 
you may not in every case understand the refer- 
ence yourself. We can hardly expect you to 
answer all of them, and if you don't do one, I 
will pass on to another. But don't hurry, and 
we will take down whatever you choose to say 
on each of them. The first question is: — 
0, J. L. — *'Do you remember anything about the 
Argonauts ? ' ' 

(Silence for a short time.) 
0. J. L. — 'Argonauts' is the word. Does it mean 
anything to you? Take your time. 
Yes 
0. J. L. — Well, would you like to say what you re- 
member ? 

Yes 
Then, by repeating the alphabet, was spelt : — 
Telegram 
0. J. L. — Is that the end of that answer? 

Yes 
0. J. L. — Well, now I will go on to the second ques- 
tion then. 

''What do you recollect about Dartmoor?" 
The time for thought was now much briefer, and 
the table began to spell pretty soon: — > 
Coming Down 
0. J. L.~Is that aU? 

No 
0. J. L. — Very well then, continue. 
Hill Ferry 

[242] 



SIR OLIVER LODGE AND ''RAYMOND" 

0. J. L. — Is that the end of the answer ? 

Yes 
0. J. L. — Very well then, now I will go on to the 
third question, which appears to be a bit com- 
plicated. 

''What do the following suggest to you: — 
Evinrude 
0. B. P. 

Kaiser's sister." 
(No good answers were obtained to these questions : 
They seemed to awaken no reminiscence. 
Asked the name of the man to whom Raymond 
had given his dog, the table spelt out STAL- 
LARD quite correctly. But this was within 
our knowledge.) 

(End of extract from record.) 

Note on the Reminiscences Awakened by the 
Words 'Argonauts' and 'Dartmoor' 

On reporting to my sons the answers given about 
'Argonauts' and 'Dartmoor' they were not at all 
satisfied. 

I found, however, from the rest of the family that 
the word TELEGRAM had a meaning in connexion 
with the 'Argonauts' — a meaning quite unknown 
to me or to my wife — but it was not the meaning 
that his brothers had expected. It seems that in a 
previous year, while his mother and I were away 
from home, the boys travelled by motor to some- 
where in Devonshire, and (as they think) at Taun- 
ton Raymond had gone into a post office, sent a tele- 
gram home to say that they were all right, and had 
signed it 'Argonauts.' The girls at home remem- 
bered the telegram quite well; the other boys did 
not specially remember it. 

The kind of reference they had wanted, Raymond 
gave ultimately though meagrely, but only after 
so much time had elapsed that the test had lost its 

[243] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

value, and only after I had been told to switch him 
on to ''Tent Lodge, Coniston," as a clue. 

Now that I know the answer I do not think the 
question was a particularly good one ; and the word 
'telegram,' which they had not expected and did not 
want, seems to me quite as good an incident as the 
one which, without a clue, they had expected him to 
recall in connexion with 'Argonauts.' Besides, I 
happened myself to know about an Iceland trip in 
Mr. Alfred Holt's yacht 'Argo' and its poetic des- 
cription by Mr. Mitchell Banks and Dr. Caton in 
a book in the drawing-room at Tent Lodge, Coniston 
(though the boys were not aware of my knowledge), 
but it never struck me that this was the thing want- 
ed ; and if it had come, the test would have been of 
inferior quality. 

Concerning the answer to 'Dartmoor' his brothers 
said that COMING DOWN HILL was correct but in- 
complete; and that they didn't remember any 
FERRY. I therefore on another occasion, namely, 
on 22 October, during a sitting with Feda (that is 
to say, not a table sitting, but one in which Mrs. 
Leonard's control Feda was speaking and reporting 
messages), said — still knowing nothing about the 
matter beyond what I had obtained in the table sit- 
ting — "Raymond, do you remember about 'Dart- 
moor' and the hill?" 

The answer is recorded as follows, together with 
the explanatory note added soon afterwards — 
though the record is no doubt a little abbreviated, 
as there was some dramatic representation by Feda 
of sudden swerves and holding on : — 
From Sitting of 0. J. L. and M. F. A. L. on 22 October, 

1915. ^Feda' speaking. 
0. J. L. — Raymond, do you remember about Dart- 
moor and the hill? Yes, he said something 
about that. He says it was exciting. What is it 
that he says ? Brake — something about a brake 

[244] 



SIR OLIVER LODGE AND ''RAYMOND" 

— puttin the brake on. Then he says, sudden 
curve — a curve — he gives Feda a jerk like 
going round a quick curve. 
(I thought at the time that this was only padding, 
but subsequently learnt from Alec that it was 
right. It was on a very long night- journey on 
their motor, when the silencer had broken down 
by bursting, at the bottom of an exceptionally 
steep hill, and there was an unnerving noise. 
The one who was driving went down other steep 
hills at a great pace, with sudden application 
of the brake and sudden quick curves, so that 
those at the back felt it dangerous, and ulti- 
mately had to stop him and insist on going 
slower. Raymond was in front with the one 
who was driving. The sensations of those at 
the back of the car were strongly connected 
with the brake and with curves; but they had 
mainly expected a reference from Raymond to 
the noise from the broken silencer, which they 
ultimately repaired during the same night with 
tools obtained at the first town they stopped at.) 
0. J. L. — Did he say anything about a ferry ? 

No, he doesn't remember that he did. 
0. J. L. — Well, I got it down. 

There is one : all the same there is one. But he 
didn't mean to say anything about it. He says 
it was a stray thought that he didn 't mean to give 
through the table. He has found one or two 
things come in like that. It was only a stray 
thought. You have got what you wanted, he 
says. * ' Hill, ' ' he meant to give, but not ' ' ferry. ' ' 
They have nothing to do with each other. 
On a later occasion I took an opportunity of cate- 
chising him further about this word FERRY, since 
none of the family remembered a ferry, or could at- 
tach any significance to the word. He still insisted 
that his mention of a ferry in connexion with a motor 

[245] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

trip was not wrong, only lie admitted that ''some 
people woiildn't call it a ferry." I waited to see if 
any further light would come; and now. long after- 
wards, on 18th August. 1916 I received from Alec a 
note referring to a recent trip, this month, which 
says : — 

''By the way, on the run to Langland Bay (which 
is the motor run we all did the year before the run 
to Newquay) we pass through Briton Ferry; 
and there is precious little ferry about it." 

So even this semi-accidental reminiscence seems 
to be turning out not altogether unmeaning ; though 
probably it ought not to have come in answer to 
'Dartmoor.' 

Now let us examine this experience and see 
whether it really assures the identity of Raymond, 
or whether it does not fit into the theory that the 
trance or subconscious mentality of the medium 
was played upon by thoughts wandering either from 
the past brain of Raymond, or still lingering either 
in the subconsciousness of Sir Oliver or of members 
of his family. 

First, let us note that Sir Oliver himself is unwit- 
tingly affected by this very theory when he com- 
ments on the word STALLARD which was the cor- 
rect name of the dog given by the medium. He says 
"But this was within our knowledge." 

Now by "our" he means either his own knowl- 
edge and that of his wife, who frequented the sit- 
tings with him, or within the knowledge of all mem- 
bers of his family. The question at once arises, if 
Sir Oliver detects the possibility of the medium's 

[246] 



SIE OLIVER LODGE AND ''RAYMOND" 

subconscious mind discerning the name of the dog 
that lingered consciously or unconsciously in his 
own mind or the minds of the other members of his 
family, then does he not imply that the medium is 
merely reflecting these thoughts in her declarations ? 
If that is true of the name of the dog why is it not 
true of all the other features of the communication ? 

Now take the word TELEGRAM. It would seem 
indeed that here was a case — ^which evidenced the 
presence of the spirit of Raymond, for it gives out 
information which is wholly beyond the conscious or 
unconscious memory of the sitter. Notice that the 
word ARGONAUTS is associated with that of 
TELEGRAM. Observe that when the words ''Ar- 
gonauts" was mentioned by the sitter there was a 
long pause on the part of the medium. Manifestly 
the subconscious mind was feeling the impression 
of a rising memory (we have the experience normally 
when we are struggling to remember something and 
it will not present itself till something else suddenly 
suggests it.) 

Now that impression gives rise to the associated 
word "Telegram." What the association was the 
medium could not communicate. *' Telegram" was 
the final answer, and that was all the medium could 
say about it. Now the explanation which Sir Oliver 
gives of the telegram-experience, instead of appar- 
ently supporting the evidence of identity as he 
seems to think, appears to me to result in a contrary 
conclusion. He says, "I found, however, from the 
rest of the family that the word TELEGRAM had a 
meaning in connexion with 'Argonauts' — a mean- 

[ 247 ] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

ing quite unknown to me or to my wife — but it was 
not the meaning that his brothers had expected. It 
seems that in a previous year, while his mother and 
I were away from home, the boys travelled by motor 
to somewhere in Devonshire, and (as they think) 
at Taunton Raymond had gone into a post office, sent 
a telegram home to say that they were all right, 
and had signed it 'Argonauts.' The girls remem- 
bered the telegram quite well; the other boys did 
not specially remember it." 

Because the experience, which the boys who had 
given the questions to their father to put to Ray- 
mond, was not the one they had expected Raymond 
to refer to, Sir Oliver seems to think it could not 
have come subconsciously to the mind of the medium. 

But the fact that the reminiscence came in jerks 
and suggestions, in single words and not complete 
sentences, is itself a support of the theory that there 
were subconscious emanations of the minds of the 
boys that floated toward and affected the subcon- 
scious mind of the medium. Knowing how inde- 
structible the memory of the subconscious mind is 
(it is permanent, continuous, mechanical and inde- 
structible) is it not plain that the word "Argonauts" 
called up the word ''Telegram," both of which words 
were connected with a forgotten experience of the 
boys but which never disappeared from their sub- 
conscious memory or minds and might be called up, 
of course, without their knowledge, if a synchronous 
or sympathetic mind came in contact with them? 
Because these memories were not in the conscious 
or subconscious mind of Sir Oliver, the sitter, does 
not in the least affect the deduction, for in the plane 

[248] 



SIR OLIVER LODGE AND '^RAYMOND" 

of the subconscious activities there seem to be secret 
avenues of mutual approach of which the conscious 
plane is wholly unaware. The boys knew their 
father had gone to the medium with their questions ; 
their subconscious minds as well as their conscious 
minds were directed to the experiment, and fastened 
upon it ; whatever there was in their past or present 
minds that might act synchronously with the mind of 
the medium would be subject to expression, and im- 
pinge the medium's mind. 

Theoretically at least this deduction is quite as 
logical and convincing as the theory that it was the 
actual personality of the departed Raymond which 
gave the communication. 

In the same manner the word FERRY may be ex- 
plained, which seemed to Sir Oliver to be so surpris- 
ing and convincing. It matters not that the boys did 
not recall any experience connected with a Ferry and 
therefore did not understand the communication from 
the alleged spirit of Raymond. The fact that they 
had once seen that ferry would place an ineradicable 
memory or registry of the experience in their sub- 
conscious natures and wholly unknown to them that 
memory might be resurrected and in a vague way 
come to the medium. The very fact that it was so 
vague, she giving only the word and being utterly 
unable to say anything more about it, would sustain 
my theory rather than that of Sir Oliver's; because 
the fact having so long ago passed out of the conscious 
memory of the boys it would lie in the subconscious 

[249] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

doubtless va^ely, unobtrusively, and would there- 
fore thus present itself. 

In precisely the same manner thoughts come to us 
in vague, distant, tantalizingly suggestive phases, 
when we are struggling to recall an event which per- 
sists in lingering behind and coming forth only in 
intimations but never palpably and conclusively. 
Psychologically the two experiences, that of struggling 
to recall a lost event and that of the medium's mes- 
sages, operate identically, the one upon the plane of 
one's own subconscious nature and the other upon 
that of the medium's. 

If one will go through the entire tedious list of Sir 
Oliver's experiences as narrated in this book I think 
he will find that all the messages and narratives lend 
themselves easily to the theory I am expounding. 

A pertinent question to the discussion is this: If 
it is really the desire of the spirit to reveal itself by 
some phase of identification why does it take this diffi- 
cult, roundabout, suggestive and tantalizing method 
instead of stating facts boldly and clearly? If Ray- 
mond wanted to really identify himself with the Ferry 
and Argonaut experience why did he not speak about 
it in a manner that would be convincing and leave no 
loop holes for other theories ? If he depended on the 
family sometime reading the puzzle he must have 
known that it would give them great pain if they 
failed to do so, and would have discouraged their be- 
lief in his after existence. On the theory that it really 
was Raymond who communicated, then, it would seem 
that when we go over to the other side we have either 
less intelligence, or less ability, or less ingenuity than 

[ 250 ] 



SIR OLIVER LODGE AND '* RAYMOND'' 

we have on this side, or we take chances more foolish- 
ly. It puts the whole communication in the category 
of the frivolous and ridiculous rather than that of 
seriousness to imagine that Rajnnond trying to iden- 
tify himself was playing with the wit and ingenuity 
of his relatives to read a very hard puzzle he was giv- 
ing them, by referring to a very remote experience of 
the boys which had passed wholly out of their con- 
scious memory. 

But that very situation fits most beautifully into 
the theory of thought-wanderings which I have at- 
tempted to expound, and affords neither an unethical 
nor an unintelligent element to enter into the prob- 
lem. 

It would, however, be wholly unjust to Sir Oliver's 
research and experiment in the psychical field (whose 
earnestness none can question) to pass without com- 
ment the really conspicuous and startling story he 
narrates about a certain photograph which had been 
taken of Raymond in a group of officers of which no 
member of the family had the slightest knowledge, 
and information of which reached them only by acci- 
dent or at least unexpectedly. 

These, briefly, are the circumstances : Mrs. or Lady 
Lodge (M.F. A.L.) had a sitting with one Peters 
whose control is ''Moonstone" on 27th of September, 
1915, at which time there was given the first intima- 
tion of the existence of this photograph. The medium 
suddenly remarked: ''You have several portraits of 
the boy. Before he went away you had got a good 
portrait of him — two, or three. Two where he is 
alone; and one where he is in a group of other men. 

[251] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

He is particular that I should tell you this. In one 
you see his walking stick." (Moonstone here put an 
imaginary stick under his arm.) 

Both Mr. and Mrs. Lodge claimed utter ignorance 
of the group picture. Sir Oliver says : ' ' I was rather 
impressed with the emphasis, 'He is particular that 
I should tell you this.' " On Monday, October 29, 
one month and two days after this sitting they re- 
ceived a letter from Mrs. Cheves, a mutual acquain- 
tance, giving them the information that her son, who 
was an officer in a South Lancashire Regiment, had 
sent a group of officers taken in August, offering to 
send her one if she had not already received it. The 
photograph was sent by Mrs. Cheves and received by 
the Lodges on December 3rd. Sir Oliver then goes 
to Mrs. Leonard for a sitting and receives the follow- 
ing communication through Feda: 

'^ Extract from the Record of 0. J. L.'s Sitting with 

Mrs. Leonard, 3 December, 1915. 
{Mrs. Leonard's child-control, Feda, supposed to he 

speaking, and often speaking of herself in the 

third person.) 
Feda. — Now ask him some more. 
0. J. L. — Well, he said something about having a 

photograph taken with some other men. We 

haven't seen that photograph yet. Does he want 

to say anything more about it ? He spoke about 

a photograph. Yes, but he thinks it wasn't here. 

He looks at Feda, and he says, it wasn't to you, 

Feda. 
0. J. L. — No, he's quite right. It wasn't. Can he say 

where he spoke of it ? 

He says it wasn 't through the table. 
0. J. L.t — No, it wasn't. 

It wasn't here at all. He didn't know the per- 

[ 252 ] 



SIR OLIVER LODGE AND ''RAYMOND" 

son that he said it through. The conditions were 
strange there — a strange house. {Quite true, it 
was said through Peters in Mrs. Kennedy ^s house 
during an anonymous sitting on 27 September.) 

0. J. L. — Do you recollect the photograph at all? 
He thinks there were several others taken with 
him, not one or two, but several. 

0. J. L. — ^Were they friends of yours? 

Some of them, he says. He didn't know them 
all, not very weU. But he knew some ; he heard 
of some ; they were not all friends. 

0. J. L. — Does he remember how he looked in the 
photograph ? 

No, he doesn't remember how he looked. 

0. J. L. — No, no, I mean, was he standing up? 

No, he doesn't seem to think so. Some were 
raised up round; he was sitting down, and some 
were raised up at the back of him. Some were 
standing, and some were sitting, he thinks. 

0. J. L. — Were they soldiers ? 

He says yes — a mixed lot. Somebody called C 
was on it with him; and somebody called R — not 
his own name, but another R. K, K, K, — he says 
something about K. 

He also mentions a man beginning with B — 
{Indistinct muttering something like Berry y Bur- 
ney — then clearly) but put down B. 

0. J. L. — I am asking about the photograph because 
we haven't seen it yet. Somebody is going to 
send it to us. We have heard that it exists, and 
that's all. {While this is being written out, the 
above remains true. The photograph has not yet 
come.) 

He has the impression of about a dozen on it. A 
dozen, he says, if not more. Feda thinks it 
must be a big photograph. 

No, he doesn't think so, he says they were 
grouped close together. 

[253] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

0. J. L. — Did lie have a stick? 

He doesn't remember that. He remembers 
that somebody wanted to lean on him, but he is 
not sure if he was taken with some one leaning 
on him. But somebody wanted to lean on him, 
he remembers. The last what he gave you, what 
were a B. will be rather prominent in that photo- 
graph. It wasn't taken in a photographer's 
place. 

0. J. L.— Was it out of doors ? 
Yes practically. 

Feda {sotto voice) — What you mean, 'yes practi- 
cally ; ' must have been out of doors or not out of 
doors. You mean 'yes,' don't you? 

Feda thinks he means 'yes' because he says 
'practically.' 

0. J. L. — It may have been a shelter. 

It might have been. Try to show Feda. 
At the back he shows me lines going down. It 
looks like a black background, with lines at the 
back of them. {Feda here kept drawing verti- 
cal lines in the air.) 

Now without going into further details suffice it 
to say the description of both Mrs. Leonard and 
Peters was very accurate. There was a group of 
twenty one officers and Rajrmond sat in the position 
as indicated and he had a stick in his hand. Alto- 
gether the accuracy of the description of the un- 
known and unseen photograph was so perfect and 
marvellous that it might well convince one that the 
spirit personality of Rajonond had truly given the 
communication. However, it is necessary that we 
should attend to a few points before we reach a 
favorable or unfavorable conclusion. 

The first criticism that I would make is that Sir 

[254] 



SIR OLIVER LODGE AND ''RAYMOND'' 

Oliver had probably not been sufficiently careful to 
save himself from possible fraud. His disposition 
as weU as that of Lady Lodge was one of utter cre- 
dulity and a guarded inclination to help on the me- 
dium a bit. Though there is no evidence in the record 
that any actual information was given to the mediums 
by either of them. But Sir Oliver's credulity is 
first detected where he says he called on certain me- 
diums incognito, having taken pains not to let his 
identity be known. This caution would seem to 
have been a work of supererogation, for among peo- 
ple well informed, especially among well read spirit- 
ualists, the face of Sir Oliver must be very familiar, 
as it has so often appeared in magazines and news- 
papers. I doubt therefore very much that he was 
unknown to any of the mediums on whom he called. 
Sir Oliver says : ' ' On the afternoon of the same day, 
27th September 1915, that I had the first sitting with 
Mrs. Leonard, Lady Lodge had her first sitting, as a 
complete stranger, with a Mr. A. Vout Peters, who 
had been invited for the purpose — without any name 
being given — to Mrs. Kennedy's house at 3 :30." 

Now Sir Oliver himself was conscious of the im- 
possibility of disguising his identity among mediums 
and naively remarks: ''It may be objected that my 
own personal appearance is known or might be 
guessed. But that does not apply to members of my 
family, who went quite anonymously to private sit- 
tings kindly arranged for by a friend in London 
{Mrs. Kennedy, wife of Dr. Kennedy) who was no 
relation whatever, but whose own personal experience 
caused her to be sympathetic and who is both keen 
and critical about evidential considerations." (p. 96.) 

But on page 117 we are introduced to this same 
Mrs. Kennedy "a recent friend of ours in London, 

[255] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

who herself has the power of automatic writing and 
who, having herself lost her beloved son Paul, has 
had her hand frequently controlled by him," etc. 

Now whoever knows anything about people who are 
sympathetic and tender and who have or think they 
have mediumistic powers, knows well how unpreju- 
diced and critical they are ! Experience proves that 
it is utterly fatuous to trust such people for anything 
in the way of evidential conditions to prove the 
genuineness of psychic phenomena or the identity of 
spirit personages. Unconsciously and instinctively 
they will lie and cheat, give way information and 
perform whatever may be necessary to save an ex- 
periment from failing. No one knows this better than 
Sir Oliver and all the experimenters in psychic mat- 
ters. Flammarion says he had experimented with 
every known medium and he has not found one 
among them that would not cheat if they were not 
prevented and the cheating was necessary to the suc- 
cess of the sitting. 

This then is the first weak link in the chain of Sir 
Oliver's record of evidences. It may well be ques- 
tioned whether Mrs. Kennedy had not let something 
drop that gave Peters in the first interview with Mrs. 
Lodge his chance to suddenly exclaim, referring to 
Raymond, "Was he not associated with chemistry?" 

Now Sir Oliver remarks as to this: "As a matter 
of fact my laboratory has been rather specially chem- 
ical of late." 

Here then it is plain "Moonstone," or Peters made 
a bad break; for he was supposed to be receiving a 
message from Raymond with a view of identifying 

[256] 



SIR OLIVER LODGE AND ^'RAYMOND" 

him. Now instead of referring to anything that might 
identify Raymond he refers to what Raymond's 
father is connected with. It has no bearing at all on 
Raymond, except that he might have known about it 
and visited his father's laboratory. This reference 
may then be explained in one of two ways without 
any dependence on spirits. Either Mrs. Kennedy 
had unwittingly intimated to the medium that some- 
one was coming, with whom she had arranged, who 
is related to one well known in the scientific world or 
is a chemist, etc., or if the medium was truly psychic 
he might have detected in the atmosphere of the sit- 
ter, Lady Lodge, the chemical atmosphere by tele- 
pathic transfer. 

The first suggestion is, however, probably the more 
likely, for the following sentence, coming through 
the medium which he enjoined should be written down 
carefully and clearly, as manifestly evidential, seems 
to me to give away the trick. The sentence is ''NOT 
ONLY IS THE PARTITION SO THIN THAT 
YOU CAN HEAR THE OPERATORS ON THE 
OTHER SIDE: BUT A BIG HOLE HAS BEEN 
MADE." Now, that sentence is a paraphrase of one 
of Sir Oliver's own statements which had been 
widely scattered throughout public print. 

Either the medium read it clearly in Lady Lodge's 
aura, reflected from that of Sir Oliver, which is a 
scientific possibility; or it had been unwittingly 
hinted to him that the lady was in some way con- 
nected with a great scientist, and he, making a happy 
guess that it was Lady Lodge (unless indeed he knew 
her by her picture) recalled Sir Oliver's famous dec- 

[257] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

laration and reproduced it as evidence of the spirit 
presence of Raymond. 

At least such an explanation is plausible and nat- 
ural and is fully as logical and likely if not more 
than the theory of spirit intervention. 

Now the second weak link in the chain is that Sir 
Oliver does not seem to allow for the possibility of 
fraudulent practice upon his credulity, regarding the 
possible presence of the photograph in London, un- 
known to him but quite possibly known to others be- 
sides the photographer. 

The photograph was taken at the front August 24th, 
1915. It could not be printed there because of trench 
fighting and the negative with other negatives was 
sent to Aldershot for printing. The negative was not 
sent till the 15th of October. That is, it remained at 
the front for nearly two months. Meantime Ray- 
mond had been killed, Sept. 14th. That is nearly 
one month subsequent to the taking of photograph. 
The presumption here would be that Raymond had 
had an opportunity of looking at the negative as 
doubtless all the members of the group did. This 
point is important in summarizing the psychic pos- 
sibilities of the situation. 

Now on November 29th Mrs. Cheves writes that 
she has a photograph of the officers, etc. That is a 
month and a half after the negative is sent from the 
front. 

On the 27th of September, however, one month be- 
for the negative has left the front, Peters through 
** Moonstone" mentions the photograph as a message 
from Raymond. He mentions it but incidentally and 

[258] 



SIR OLIVER LODGE AND ''RAYMOND" 

makes, as Sir Oliver states, a mistake by asserting 
that Raymond carried the stick iinder his arm. 

Then on Dec. 3rd, about two months after Peters 
had given the first hint about the photograph, Mrs. 
Leonard, through Feda, gives a further and more de- 
tailed description of the photograph in answer to a 
direct question addressed to Raymond. 

Sir Oliver says that Raymond had only one leave 
of absence from the front, July 20th, 1915. By this 
he means to insinuate that he could then have given 
no information about it because the photo had not 
then been taken. But there were twenty one officers 
in the group. Sir Oliver says nothing about any of 
them. How does he know whether any of these had 
leave of absence after the taking of the photo, and 
whether they may have made any mention of it among 
their friends when visiting London of the vicinage? 
Twenty one is a large number and it is quite within 
possibility that some of them at least returned from 
the front for a visit subsequent to the taking of the 
picture and that they might at least have dropped 
a passing remark, if, indeed, they did not give an 
accurate description of the photograph. 

I am speaking of this of course merely as a pos- 
sibility, not as a fact. Nevertheless it is a possibility 
that must be investigated before any final credence 
can be put into the genuineness of the message or its 
acceptance as any sort of evidence of the identity of 
Raymond. 

Aldershot, where the photographers printed the 
photo, is only 34 miles southwest of London. It 
stands to reason and common sense that if the pho- 

[259] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

tographers printed such a splendid picture of twen- 
ty one conspicuous officers of the Lancashire Com- 
panies, they would have displayed them in the win- 
dows and possibly have sold some besides. I am not 
saying this is so ; but I am merely indicating that all 
these possibilities must be allowed for, and disproved, 
before any credence in the genuineness of the mes- 
sage can be granted. 

I say then it is quite possible that Peters, during 
the period elapsing between the taking of the nega- 
tive, Sept. 1-ith and Sept. 27th, might have gotten a 
hint of the existence of the negative by some one of 
the officers at home on a furlough. 

I am the more convinced of this possibility by the 
fact that at the time Sir Oliver sat with Mrs. Leonard 
he received, through Feda, so much more accurate and 
detailed a description of the picture. This sitting 
took place on December 3rd, just sixty-seven days af- 
ter Lady Lodge's first sitting with Peters when she 
first heard abo"&t the picture. Here are sixty-seven 
days for the mediums to operate to land the biggest 
prize they could seize ! If it could go out to the world 
that Sir Oliver had received this vastly important 
message proving almost beyond a possible doubt that 
his son Raymond in person, only a few days after his 
death, had communicated with him, and afforded 
such evidence of his identity as is beyond dispute, 
what a tremendous triumph would this be for the 
cause of spiritualism ; and what energ}^ and ingenuity 
every medium might well afford to expend on it! 

I find almost a proof, and certainly a virile hint, of 
this deduction in Peters' own remark on which Sir 

[ 260 ] 



SIR OLIVER LODGE AND ^'RAYMOND" 

Oliver dwelt, but for a different reason than I do. 
The remark was: ^'He (Raymond) is particular that 
I should tell you this, namely, that the photograph 
had been taken," which confirms me in this deduc- 
tion, especially when it is reinforced by another sen- 
tence also delivered by Peters as coming from Ray- 
mond, during the same sitting. After Peters had 
delivered the famous sentence about making a hole 
through the partition between the operators on both 
sides, "he then jumped up in his chair vigorously, 
snapped his fingers excitedly and spoke loudly : ' Great 
God' how father will be able to speak out! much 
firmer than he has ever done, because it will touch 
our hearts.' " (Page 134.) 

Now to any who are acquainted with the tricks, 
unconscious and conscious, of the professional me- 
diums, this scene appears very much like an elaborate 
trap in which to catch Lodge by flattery and decep- 
tion, and make him feel that he is going to get great 
renown and a victory over his opponents and those 
who scoff by giving evidence that is undisputable. 

Again I wish to emphasize that I am not asserting 
the transaction was a fraud. I am merely trying to 
show how there was apparently every opportunity 
for the perpetration of one, and unless the sitters 
were every moment on their guard, and had em- 
ployed keen and effective detectives they might have 
been imposed upon. 

If, again, we remove the possibility of fraud, then 
it occurs to me that every detail relating to the mys- 
terious photograph can far more rationally and 
easily be explained by the hypothesis of telepathic 

[261] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

and wandering thought-forms than by that of spirit- 
ism, which seems to border on the plane of the super- 
natural. 

Once assume that Raymond may have seen the neg- 
ative, as undoubtedly he did, as well as every mem- 
ber of the group, then you have the initial point of 
all the following telepathic results. 

That thought of the photograph was in his mind, 
or at least was registered there subconsciously. He 
dies in battle; his dying thoughts are of home; he 
regrets that the negative could not have been printed 
so his parents could have seen it; 13 days after his 
death his mother comes in contact with the mind of 
Peters the medium. Suddenly Peters sees a photo- 
graph, but it is so indistinct he cannot give a detailed 
description ; he has some intimation about a stick but 
he thinks Rajonond is holding the stick under his 
arm. As a matter of fact all the officers sitting on 
the ground are holding sticks in their hands in the 
picture. 

Peters' unconscious mind has received the passing 
vibrations of Raymond's last thoughts or images, and 
sees them dimly. He tells in an indifferent way what 
he sees. 

Then 67 days after that, Sir Oliver comes in con- 
tact with the subconscious mind of Mrs. Leonard and 
there she is able to give a far more detailed and sat- 
isfactory description, so perfect that it would seem 
she must have actually seen the picture. 

The fact, too, that at this sitting ''Feda" (Mrs. 
Leonard's control) spoke about the names of one or 
two of the officers and could not get any of them 

[262] 



SIR OLIVER LODGE AND '^ RAYMOND'' 

exactly but did approacli as near as the initials 
which fitted some of the names of the officers but not 
all, is further evidence of the telepathic or vibratory 
hypothesis rather than the spiritistic. For if Ray- 
mond could say that there were initials B and C and 
K, etc., why could he not equally well have given the 
names of Boast and others in full? 

The fact that the medium could get no further than 
the initials would indicate either that she had heard 
a rumor as to who these officers were or had been told 
and forgotten, remembering no more than initials, or, 
which theory I prefer, that, as in dreams, there floated 
before her mind dim outlines of these names and she 
could catch no more than the initials as they flitted 
along; getting some of them wrong and some right. 

If this theory is correct it would explain how she 
might have seen these names dimly and swiftly pass- 
ing, as things sometimes do in dreams, and could 
only catch the first letter, yet when trying to give 
the name in full, getting it either wrong or blurred 
and mixed. Thus when asked : *' Were they soldiers 
(the characters in the picture) she replies: 

"He says — a mixed lot. Somebody called C was 
on it with him ; and somebody called R — not his own 
name but another R. K, K, K, — ^he says something 
about K." 

*'He also mentions a man beginning with B (in- 
distinct muttering something like Berry, Burney — 
then clearly) but put down B." 

Now of all those initials none could be recognized 
but B (Capt. S. T. Boast) and of course this is a 
guess. Sir Oliver says that officers whose names be- 

[263] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

gin with B and C and with R are among them ; though 
none beginning with K. Therefore we must con- 
clude that the medium was guessing, for it was easy 
to imagine that among twenty one names some would 
begin with almost any letter of the alphabet; indeed 
we might say it would be a mere chance that any of 
the 26 characters of the alphabet would not easily 
find an initial place in twenty one names of men. 

So perhaps a bit of all three theories enters into 
the game. There may have been a bit of fraud (for 
which as I think I have shown there was ample 
room) ; there may have been some psychic discern- 
ment and actual mediumistic or sub-conscious activ- 
ity ; there may have been a good deal of happy guess- 
ing, which is always a venture, yet often worth the 
price if good game is to be captured. 

If thus the photograph experience fails in Lodge's 
psychic experimentation to demonstrate identity, we 
may well believe that it is quite impossible for such 
identification to be established, and that as yet we 
are driven no nearer to the deduction that logically 
psychic manifestations are the effect of the return of 
spirits, who once inhabited the flesh, to the scenes 
of their former abodes. 

I wish here, however, to register my disposition to- 
ward all the efforts that are making for the proof 
of the after life from alleged spiritistic manifesta- 
tions. I have not the slightest prejudice against such 
a demonstration but would gladly welcome it if it 
were true. I am, however, forced to the conclusion 
that as yet nothing positive either as evidence of 
identity of specific persons, or even as evidence of 

[264] 



SIR OLIVER LODGE AND '^ RAYMOND" 

any phase of spirit manifestation has been given the 
world. 

The hypothesis which I am presenting seems to me 
to give a clearer, more scientific and logical explana- 
tion of all the phenomena; namely, that thoughts in 
the human mind emanate from their source and be- 
come psychic elements or units, mento-organisms, 
thought-forms, or what you choose to call them, that 
remain either permanently or through a certain period 
of time, in the ethereal atmosphere, and are subject 
to synchronous association with minds they contact in 
living human brains. 



[265] 



CHAPTER XXXII 

A Laboratory Suggestion 

I did not know when I wrote my *' Psychic Phen- 
omena, Science and Immortality," that there were 
any other persons in the world who were studying 
along similar lines and had reached almost identical 
conclusions. When I discovered this fact it naturally 
greatly encouraged me in my hypothesis and inves- 
tigation; for, usually, when a number of minds ap- 
proach a consensus on any theory it develops in 
time that the theory becomes a reality. 

After the publication of my work, from England 
I received the following letter: 

''1 Abingdon Mansions Feb. 14, 1914. 

Abingdon Eoad 
Kensington 
London W 
Dear Sir: 

Your interesting 'Psychic Phenomena, Science and 
Immortality' has just come to my notice. I read on 
page 418 in reference to what you call the soul-body ; 
'Its appearance, could it be seen (as biologists pro- 
phesy it sometime will be by the use of instruments 
not yet invented) would be luminescent or radiant,' 
etc. 

This passage has greatly interested me for reasons 
which you will understand should you be able to 
spare the time to read the enclosed. It was written 
in 1908 and unfortunately it is only now that I am 
able to take practical steps towards demonstrating 
its accuracy. I am not following the method as set 

[266] 



A LABORATORY SUGGESTION 

forth in the 'Annals' (a paper now also defunct) but 
the same principle is of course involved. I hope to 
affect this demonstration sometime during the pres- 
ent year. . . . 

Yours faithfully, 

Edward W. Bobbett." 

The very interesting and suggestive article which 
my correspondent enclosed I shall here in part pres- 
ent, as worthy of serious consideration, and as fur- 
ther illustrating how a seriously scientific mind is at- 
tempting to apply strictly physical theories to the 
explanation of psychic manifestations. The article 
appeared in Volume YII, Number 48 of * * The Annals 
of Psychical Science, '^ December, 1908. 

**As the ether is to the orthodox scientist, so is 
the 'double' to the followers of metaphysics. Both 
are necessary in order that we may have a working 
hjrpothesis. And just as the evidence for the reality 
of the ether becomes more pressing every day, so 
again our secondary body or double becomes more 
necessary in order that we may give rhyme and 
reason to our speculations. It is not my present 
purpose to show that this secondary body exists, 
but, assuming this to be the case, I wish here to sub- 
mit certain proposals which may be of value. 

Reasoning from the ' clouds, ' so common at seances 
and from certain experiments of M. Durville recently 
recorded in the Annals, it seems certain that our sec- 
ondary body is composed, at least in part, of radio- 
active matter. The discharge of the electroscope 
without contact in the presence of Eusapia Paladino 
(Dr. Imoda's experiment) is also significant. Rays 
emanating from the medium ionize the surrounding 
air, which, thus turned into a conductor of electricity, 
discharges the electroscope. It will ultimately be 
found, I believe, that the rays emanate from the body 

[267] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

we are considering, and not from the physical body. 
It is of interest to note, in passing, that these par- 
ticular rays from Ensapia caused a gradual discharge 
of the instrument. There is a hint here, it seems to 
me, that these are the despised and rejected N rays 
of M. Blondlot, for as he himself points out. . . . 
the increase of the phosphorescence under the action 
of N rays takes an appreciable time, whether to ap- 
pear or disappear." 

This view is quite in keeping with the theory I 
tried to work out in my work referred to above, and 
it is encouraging to find other thinkers and investi- 
gators coming to similar conclusions. Speaking of al- 
leged "materializations" (for which I have tried to 
account on physical grounds, page 455^) he remarks: 
*'May we not argue that particles given off by the 
materialization figure caused ionization of the air im- 
mediately surrounding it, this in turn 'producing a 
sort of white vapor?' If this is so it seems to me we 
can imitate part of the process of materialization and 
at the same time demonstrate the existence of the 
secondary body, which, it will be evident, seems to be 
radio-active." 

He then proceeds to present the manner of con- 
structing an instrument in which the ionized ag- 
gregate, or the radio-active secondary body, can be 
made visible, having been educed from the physical 
body through anaesthetization. He does not yet seem 
to have reached any positive results but I call atten- 
tion to the correspondence and the investigator's 
hopes, first because it is suggestive and may arouse 
other investigators to attempt the experim.ent, and 
second because his deductions are so closely similar to 
my own. 

^"Psychic Phenomena, Science and Immortality." 

[268] 



A LABOBATORY SUGGESTION 

''Arrange a cage so as to imprison some animal, 
preferably a dog or monkey. An aluminum box with 
a glass window must fit closely over the box. An en- 
trance and exit pipe must be fitted so as to admit an 
anaesthetic gas. Also a pipe must be fitted to admit 
air. Now the first box must be enclosed within a sec- 
ond chamber also having a window, and it must be 
suspended at four corners so as to hang in the centre 
of a second box. The pipe which is to admit gas must 
of course pass to the outside of the large box and the 
same with the air pipe. We must also have an air 
pump attached to the large box. Between these two 
boxes it is necessary to prepare an atmosphere of 
perfectly dust-free-air or water vapor. With these 
conditions we commence operations by admitting gas 
to the small box, at the same time partly shutting off 
the outer air supply. The anaesthetic will, by hypo- 
thesis, displace the secondary body of the imprisoned 
animal. This in theory will occupy a position some- 
where between the two boxes — that is, somewhere in 
the prepared atmosphere. But also, by hypothesis, it 
will generate rays of some description, probably those 
called beta rays. These rays of whatever nature 
they ultimately prove to be will cause ionization. 
Now, with a stroke of the air pump, we withdraw 
some of the air, causing the remaining air to expand 
suddenly. The temperature will immediately fall, 
and this will cause the water vapor to condense upon 
the ions. But the particles producing ionization have 
not a very extended range, at least, some of them 
have not, and probably a variety of rays would be 
given off. Those particles of short range, then, will 
not produce ionization far from their source, i. e., 
the secondary body. But they will be given from 
every point of this body. Therefore when condensa- 
tion occurs, the resulting line will outline the form of 
the secondary 'body. We shall have proved the exis- 
tence of the body by thoroughly reliable objective 
means." 

[269] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

I learned from this interesting gentleman by cor- 
respondence that his circumstances were such that he 
had not been able to prosecute his experiments to 
practical results, but had hoped soon to achieve them. 

In a communication more recently received (since 
indeed I have had this publication in preparation) I 
am informed by my correspondent, that while, nat- 
urally, he has been much interrupted because of the 
war, yet he did find opportunity to experiment with 
a very good subject. The results were tentatively sat- 
isfactory to himself, but the circumstances were such 
that he could not call in, as he had intended, properly 
qualified visitors, who could give their personal at- 
testation to the verity of the results. He does not 
feel, therefore, that there is any immediate scientific 
value in his efforts, but he is working on hopefully 
and it may be before long happy results will follow. 

It is beneficial, however, for us to know that there 
are individuals and independent experimenters and 
investigators working along kindred lines ; and to me 
this is particularly valuable and encouraging, be- 
cause I am not so situated that I could attempt any 
personal experimentation, for I have not yet found a 
subject that could be useful to such ends. 

De. Crawford's Experiments 

Since I have been writing this book a remarkable 
work has appeared, entitled ''The Reality of Psychic 
Phenomena.'' In this work the author, W. J. Craw- 
ford, D. Sc, presents 87 laboratory experiments with 
a remarkable medium, all of which were conducted 

[ 270 ] 



A LABORATORY SUGGESTION 

on strictly scientific principles and with extraordin- 
ary precaution. Dr. Crawford, being a mechanical 
engineer and a university lecturer, utilized delicate 
measuring apparatus to determine the action of the 
psychic force upon the medium, its effect in increas- 
ing and decreasing her weight as it passed to and 
from her in levitation, etc. 

The results of Dr. Crawford's experiments have 
given rise in his mind to what he calls the ''Canti- 
lever theory," by which he means that the psychic 
energy shapes itself in the form of an invisible rod 
passing straight from the medium's body horizan- 
tally, and with a curved and expanded (fingered?) 
end seizes the object which it tips, pounds or levi- 
tates. The psycho-mechanical theory is most inter- 
esting and proves the tendency of scientists to grasp 
this subject from the material point of view, not- 
withstanding the fact that this author finally inclines 
to the view that the "operators" of the force are 
discarnate spirits. Still, as to the notion of the 
''rod" or psychic projection he says, "I am inclined 
to think it is a form of chemical energy associated 
with the human nervous system. At any rate, I 
think it a bit doubtful that this psychic energy is as- 
sociated with particles of matter." (P. 241.) Here 
his "cantilever theory" would seem to parallel my 
own "electron" theory of thought. Both theories 
pointing away from the plane of pure imagination 
and psychological metaphysics to methodical labora- 
tory experimentation. (See Appendix E.) 

[271] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

Another Laboratory Surprise 

While I am reading the proofs of this work, strange 
to say, I come in contact with another marvellously- 
corroborative incident, illustrating the law that mind 
waves do work together in the ether, and cause many 
minds to labor without one another's knowledge in 
attempted solutions of world problems. 

I have already referred to Dr. Albert Abrams, of 
San Francisco, in previous pages of this treatise. 

But I was not then aware that he had been at work 
for years in demonstrating in the laboratory, and 
by physical instruments, the truth of the very princi- 
ple for which I myself have been for years con- 
tending. 

In my previous book (Psychic Phenomena, etc.), 
I had said, discussing the nature of telepathy, 
' ' Science must deal with things, and not merely with 
theories, with substance and not with supposition. 
To know what telegraphy is she must first know more 
about electricity than she had before; to know what 
wireless is she must first become cognizant of Hertzian 
waves and the invisible media involved in the wire- 
less transference of physical messages. Thus it is 
with regard to so-called telepathy. To stand still 
merely after christening it 'mental transference,' and 
think it has been explained, is absurd. We have 
learned what medium in Nature permits the trans- 
ference of telegraphic messages ; so we must learn the 
substantial, material or ultra-material element in 
Nature that suffers itself to be utilized in the trans- 
ference of mental thoughts. ' ' 

[272] 



A LABORATORY SUGGESTION 

Now in that work, I contended, that hypothetically 
the agency had been discovered, at least theoretically, 
in the electrons which revolve around the brain in 
the exercise of thought and fly off from the brain to 
other brains. In the present work I have attempted 
by logical discernment to re-inforce that theory. 

But now comes a practical and distinguished scien- 
tist and physician, a biologist who is familiar with 
electrical phenomena, and actually corroborates my 
theory by the discoveries he has made in laboratory 
experiments with physical agencies. 

In an article recently published in the Electrical 
Experimenter, he says: "Telepathy is in disrepute 
and scientifically minded psychologists do not be- 
lieve it. Science demands that phenomena should be 
objective, capable of reproduction at all times and 
demonstrable by instruments of precision." He says 
further, "Brain waves are an actuality and like light 
and the impulses of 'wireless' are conveyed by the 
ether. The electron theory shows that the ultimate 
constituents of matter are electrons or charges of 
electricity and that radio-activity is dependent on 
ethereal disturbances by change in motions of elec- 
trons." Again: "The electro-magnetic waves in 
'wireless' demand an exciter, but the sensitive hu- 
man reflexes, first utilized by the writer in detecting 
energy, make an exciter unnecessary; the revolutions 
of the electrons alone substitute the exciter/' (Italics 
are mine.) 

This latter statement is precisely corroborative of 
my own explanation of the manner in which the brain 
action, in thinking, the cellular disturbance, is ac- 

[273] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

tivated by the impaction of the electrons, which, as 
it were, embody the thought, and convey it beyond the 
mind of the thinker. 

Dr. Abrams has apparently proved all this by 
practical experiments carried out in the Cooper Med- 
ical College. He reaches the identical conclusions 
I have advocated with regard to so-called ''psychic 
phenomena'' that ''they are independent of dis- 
embodied spirits and referrable to human energy." 
He says the experiments which he has demonstrated 
will serve "as a means of disocculting the occult, and 
will enlist the genius of the multitude in corroborat- 
ing my original investigations."* 

^ See "Electrical Experimenter;" also Abram's "New Concepts in 
Diagnosis and Treatment" and "Popular Demonstration of 
Thought Transference," by Albert Abrams, A.M., M.D., L.L.D., 
F.R.M.S. (San Francisco, California.) 



[274] 



CHAPTER XXXIII 

The Electron Theory of Thought 
and the After Life 

What bearing, then, does this hypothesis (the 
electron theory of thought and consciousness), have 
upon the problem of a possible after life? If it has 
any bearing at all is it of a negative or affirmative 
character? In order to pursue this study we must 
consider first the nature and evolution of conscious- 
ness. We have already seen how modern science al- 
most unanimously accepts the view of the evolution 
of consciousness from antecedent forms of animal and 
even vegetable life up to its crowning triumph in 
man. 

We should not overlook the fact that in the ascend- 
ency of consciousness it becomes more intense and 
concentrated and organizes a special apparatus or 
instrumentality in each ascending stratum. 

If we contemplate the lowest form, the amoeba, for 
instance, we know that we find no differentiation in 
the substance of which it is composed; it is entirely 
homogeneous. Yet there must be some sort of con- 
sciousness in the amoeba, else it would not reach out 
by improvised mouths and limbs to secure food for 
itself from the external world. 

There is here then a germinal consciousness; but 
it is unconcentrated, diffuse and generalized. The 
entire amoeba acts as the organ of its limited con- 

[275] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

sciousness; the whole body is at once responsive to 
each internal or external stimulation. 

Biologists inform us that as we ascend in the scale 
of life we find a gradual differentiation in the groups 
of cells set apart for special functions, and that from 
a slight tube that grows out of the skin there slowly 
develops the nerve-system and in the courses of ages 
finally the brain. Always the degree of the concen- 
tration and intensity of the consciousness is commen- 
surate with the complexity of the gradually forming 
apparatus of nerves and brain. Li the amoeba we 
have, as said, the lowest stage of consciousness be- 
cause there is no concentrated organization through 
which to express it, but only the homogeneous body 
of the amoeba. But when we come to the animal 
kingdom we find that here in each ascending stratum 
there are formed more concentrated apparatus and 
thus the state of consciousness becomes more intense ; 
until finally in the human organism it develops into 
sustained individuality — or self -consciousness — a state 
which does not exist below man. 

So true does this fact seem to be that it is now quite 
generally accepted as a biological law that self- 
consciousness could not express itself until the cen- 
tral nervous system was organized in the human body. 
"When that eventuated then came self-consciousness. 
This law seems to be re-enforced by the study of a 
human being. For we find that in children there is 
no existence of actual self-consciousness till some time 
after the first or second year. Almost always before 
that, the child speaks in the third person about it- 
self; it is somebody else to itself. And when the 

[276] 



THOUGHT AND THE AFTER LIFE 

realization of self-consciousness arrives it is con- 
comitant with a sense of mental exhilaration. It is 
said of Goethe that he came running to his mother 
in great delight and exclaimed, "Mutter, ich bin 
ich." He had found that he was not another but 
himself. 

Now, with this fact there is, biologists and physi- 
ologists are now informing us, another important ac- 
companying fact. It is, that not until the frontal 
lobe of the brain is sufficiently developed, is it pos- 
sible for this self-consciousness to arrive. Moreover, 
it is now discovered and set forth as a triumphant 
discovery that when the brain is analyzed it reveals 
the fact that there are certain distinctive thought 
centres set apart for the higher modes of conscious- 
ness. 

On this biological law let me quote Haeckel, for the 
reason that he is commonly regarded as the biological 
leader of aggressive materialism and because of 
the clear exposition. He says: ''Physiological ob- 
servation and experiment determined twenty years 
ago that the particular portion of the mammal brain 
which we call the seat (preferably the organ) of con- 
sciousness is a part of the cerebrum, an area in a 
late developed gray bed, or cortex, which is evolved 
out of the convex dorsal portion of the primary cere- 
bral vescicle, the 'fore-brain.' Now the morphologi- 
cal proof of this physiological thesis has been suc- 
cessfully given by the remarkable progress of mi- 
croscopic anatomy of the brain, which we owe to the 
perfect methods of research of modern science. 
. . . The most important development is the 
discovery of the organs of thoitght by Paul Flechsig 
of Leipsig; he proved that in the gray matter of the 

[277] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

brain are found the four seats of the central sense- 
organs, or 'four inner spheres of sensation' . . . . 
Between these four 'sense-centres' lie the four great 
'thought centres', or centres of association, the real 
organs of mental life; they are those highest instru- 
ments of psychic activity which produce thought and 
consciousness."^ ("The Riddle of the Universe," 
p 183.) 

In a general way the truthfulness of the physi- 
ological law that the higher development of the brain 
is commensurate with the formation of the skull and 
the more complex and delicate associations of cell- 
groups is perhaps beyond dispute. 

We may then safely conclude that the so-called 
faculties or, better said, the functions of the brain 
known as perception, memory, representation, reflec- 
tion, etc., have been developed by the aggregation or 
grouping of specialized cell-areas in the brain (which 
we may call psychic units) and by virtue of the exer- 
cise of these faculties they have become stereotyped 
into fixed forms. Now I think it is no exaggeration 
in analogy to conclude that just as the biological cell 
is the physiological unit, by whose aggregation and 
organization into special groups the complex organ- 
ism of a living body is evolved; so what might be 

^I am not oblivious of the fact that there is not a universal consensus 
among physiologists as to this precise and detailed discovery. 
Some doubt still prevails in some quarters, ' 'Is there a definite 
localization of special mental qualities or moral tendencies, and, 
if so, where are they located? These are problems of extreme 
difficulty, but their interest and importance are difficult to ex- 
aggerate. . . . When we have collected information as to the 
relative development of the various parts of the higher brain in 
all classes of mankind with the same thoroughness with which 
they have investigated the racial peculiarities of the skull the 
question will be within a measurable distance of solution." 
(Prof. Johnson Symington, "Variations in Development of Skull 
and Brains" — see British Report. Association for Advancement 
of Science or Smithsonian Annual, 1903.) 

[278] 



THOUGHT AND THE AFTER LIFE 

called the psychological cell (any mental act) may be 
regarded as the psychic unit of the soul. Now as the 
association of the biological cell-groups in the physical 
organism produces special organs (visceral, thoracic, 
etc.) ; so the association of the psychic cell-groups, 
namely perception, thought, memory, etc., constitute 
what might be called the organs of consciousness. 

In recent laboratory experiments, as already stated, 
the physical organs have been successfully removed 
from the body and still, under certain conditions, they 
continue to function normally, while outside the body. 
These extracted organs may be made to continue to 
act and work precisely as they did in the living body 
of the animal if the proper kind of sustaining element 
or food can be procured for them. Certain solutions 
have been found which perform this office; so these 
extracted organs actually continue to live and work, 
although the original body from which they came is 
dead. To this we have already referred. 

Now why should we not investigate and treat the 
psychic cell-groups, or organs of the soul or conscious- 
ness, precisely as the biologist has treated the physi- 
ological organs of living animals ? 

Is it not true that just as the physiological organs 
can be removed and made to continue to function, so 
in psychological experimentations, and likewise some- 
times spontaneously, the cell-groups of organs of the 
soul are extracted from the mind and independently 
of it continue to function exteriorily? We have seen 
a hint of this possibility in thought-photography ; for 
if such a photograph can ever be taken it must be 
that what is grasped in the camera are the external- 

[279] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

ized forms of thouglit that move out from the brain 
and are held long enough for the seizure of the cam- 
era's plate. We see a hint of this law again in the 
so-called apparition or ghosts, in clairvoyant vision, 
and we may safely say, in all phases of what are pop- 
ularly called psychic phenomena. 

We have learned in hypnotic experimentation that 
the visualization of a mental state in the experience 
of the subject is commensurate with the intensity of 
the thought in the mind of the operator. If the idea 
is clear, strong and complete, it will the more surely 
become the state of the consciousness of the subject. 
Or even if the idea is not clear in the operator's mind, 
the persistent repetition of the thought or idea by the 
operator will by sheer force of repetition be visualized 
to the recipient. In short by this experience we dis- 
cover that the degree of the intensity of the con- 
sciousness measures the duration of the thought ex- 
pelled from the operator's mind. 

May we not then logically conclude that the 
thought-forms which emanate from the human mind, 
and somehow exist invisibly outside the mind, are 
potentially constant entities, whose duration depends 
on the degree or intensity of the consciousness from 
which they sprung? Here then we discern a possible 
basis for a future existence, dependent on the degree 
of self -consciousness attained by a human being. Of 
course a difficulty must here be met and overcome if 
possible. Even granted that the states of conscious- 
ness, which we have agreed to call cell-groupings or 
soul-organs, might continue to exist, how are we to 

[280] 



THOUGHT AND THE AFTER LIFE 

know that they would consist of a personality, espec- 
ially the personality from which they emanated 1 

That is, how are we to know that between these 
thought-forms there exists a permanent link which 
so establishes their affinity that they must coalesce 
and mutually function as a personality hereafter? 
We must be frank and admit that the difficulty is not 
yet wholly overcome. 

We might say psychological experiment is about, 
in this regard, at the same stage where biological and 
physiological experimentation rests at present. Just 
as the biologist has, at present, demonstrated that 
the physical organs can live and functionate when 
abstracted from the body, or the living organization 
of matter ; so the physiological psychologist can cause 
the activation and continued functioning of a psychic 
organ (a thought or state of consciousness) when ab- 
stracted from the mind which originated it. 

But, as ia biology the art of holding together the 
living organs within the body in indefinite duration, 
so that planetary immortality becomes possible, is not 
yet achieved, so, in the psychological realm we have 
gone about as far as the biologist and shown that psy- 
chic cell-groups may be compelled to function outside 
the living brain from which they emanate, but have 
not yet discovered the art of compelling their perpet- 
ual integrity, so that they will continue to act to- 
gether in co-operative self-conscious modes of exis- 
tence, after the body has been destroyed. 

But the possibility of this psychic continuity should 
not seem less demonstrable than the physiological. In 
the biological realm there is already a prophecy of the 

[281] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

physiological possibility; why then should we think 
the psychic possibility absurd? 

Here are the progressive stages of the demonstra- 
tion. First, thought is a mode of motion ; second, the 
substance in which thought moves, or which it acti- 
vates, is by hypothesis radiant matter, or rays of elec- 
trons ; third, thought-forms, made up of radiant mat- 
ter, not only exist in the brain but hypothetically may 
leave the brain and reproduce themselves in other 
brains ; fourth, thought-forms in the shape of appari- 
tions may be photographed, thus establishing their 
substantial nature ; fifth, the duration of the thought- 
form is measured by the degree of the intensity of the 
consciousness; therefore, sixth, as thought-forms can 
be temporarily held outside the brain long enough to 
be photographed, it follows as a possibility that they 
may be permanently maintained if the state of con- 
sciousness is sufficiently integrated and strong. 

This line of reasoning is, of course, merely a sug- 
gestion, but it indicates the laws or processes in Na- 
ture that would make an after life a logical possi- 
bility. 

On the subject of the possibility of the permanent 
integrity of the ego or the personal consciousness, I 
have said elsewhere,^ where I have fully elaborated 
the theme : ' ' The problem of identity both here and in 
a possible hereafter will depend wholly on the ca- 
pacity of the so-called ego to maintain its permanent 
synthetic character. So long as there is a tenacity of 
memory, recognitiveness and the ability of merging 
one's infinite series of momentary incidents of con- 
sciousness in a constant self -consciousness, so long may 

2 "Psychic Phenomena, Science and Immortality," pp. 216-17. 

[282] 



THOUGHT AND THE AFTER LIFE 

the self or personal ego be continued. But on the 
interruption or cessation of such capacity the identi- 
cal self may be dissipated/' . . . 

**What we call the consciousness of the ego, or the 
self-consciousness is, then, but the capacity of the 
primary-self to command certain experiences and re- 
tain their momentary or tentative memory. But a 
large residuum of this consciousness sinks into the 
secondary-self and becomes its self-consciousness, 
which is not to be confused with the self-consciousness 
of the normal self. When the two halves are so re- 
lated that the primary-self remains in complete com- 
mand of the situation, we have what we call normal 
self-consciousness. When the primary-self loses its 
superintendency, and the sunken-consciousness rises 
into command, we have secondary self-consciousness. 
Now the whole problem of the normal personality 
consists in the power to maintain its supremacy over 
all inferior self-conscious activities. Modern experi- 
mental psychology has proved that in all human be- 
ings this supremacy can easily be disturbed if not de- 
throned, and that even the healthiest and most regular 
human iDcings are not free from this intrusion.'' 

The problem of personality or self -consciousness is 
then immediately connected with another, and that is 
whether there is in the experience and capacity of 
the human organism any bond of union which may 
permanently hold together the potentially discrete 
and segregated parts of the consciousness. Mani- 
festly that bond is MEMORY. 

''This is the fundamental fact, and the marvellous 
revelation of modern phj^siological psychology, name- 
ly, that the ego, or the self-conscious ' I, ' is potentially 
susceptible of permanent self-realization, is, as it 
seems, the ultimate reality back of or within the vary- 
ing and seemingly contradictory experience of tran- 

[ 283 ] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

sitory personalities. The ' I, ' is ever self -discoverable. 
Although seemingly for a time the 'I' may be obliter- 
ated, science is now able to prove that it is not neces- 
sarily an ultimate obliteration, but the rather an ob- 
scuration, a momentary disappearance." (idem. p. 
255.) 

What physiological psychology demonstrates then 
is the fact that there is a potentially permanent per- 
sonality or ego, and its permanence or perpetuity de- 
pends only on the law of psychic association or mem- 
ory. The consciousness that is susceptible of self-con- 
centration, of intense personal integration, in short, 
a consciousness that is pillared and buttressed by a 
rigid character, both moral and intellectual, is the 
consciousness required to prophesy continuity of 
duration. 

Such a potential consciousness has been evolved in 
the realization of mankind out of the age-long devel- 
opment of memory and synthetic experience in the 
lower animal kingdoms. In man, then, the potential 
and slowly ascending self-consciousness has reached 
its climax, and is maintained by a highly specialized 
and perfected type of personal memory. Therefore 
human consciousness logically predicts the possibility 
of continuity after death, whereas that of the lower 
animals does not. If, then, human consciousness, is 
by hypothesis, sustained and sustenanced by a ma- 
terial element, which is primary and indestructible, 
its permanent continuity after death is predictable 
and possible, as logically as the continuity of the syn- 
thetic physical life of human beings upon this planet 
(which seems to have been demonstrated by the 
laboratory success of Dr. Carel and others). 
[284] 



THOUGHT AND THE AFTER LIFE 

Incidentally the recent discovery of the Law of 
Consciousness overturns an objection to the possible 
permanent continuity of self-consciousness which 
Haeckel presents in his ''Riddle." He says: The 
momentous announcement of modern physiology, that 
the cerebrum is the organ of consciousness and mental 
action in man and the higher animals is illustrated 
and confirmed by the pathological study of diseases. 

When parts of the coretx are destroyed by disease 
the respective functions are affected. . . . How 
would that be possible if consciousness were an im- 
material entity, independent of these anatomical or- 
gans. And what becomes of the 'immortal soul' when 
it no longer has the use of these organs." (p. 184.) 

Haeckel overlooks two facts here. One is, that the 
affected organs, "destroyed" by lesions, are capable 
of resuscitation by psychological treatment as amply 
illustrated in modern psychological clinics. In some 
cases where the vital centres of the brain have been 
seriously injured, the functions of these organs have 
been taken up by others, either by vicarious re-actions, 
or, by restoration of memory; the conscious function 
of the "destroyed" organ has been revived. Then, 
secondly, there is the possibility that such an hypo- 
thesis as I am advancing (the electron theory of con- 
sciousness) may be true, in which case the organs of 
consciousness would not be transcendental but em- 
bodied in substantial elements. If this element, by 
hypothesis, is permanent and indestructible it affords 
the very condition for an "immortal soul" which 
Haeckel says does not exist. 

Nevertheless there is still a more difficult problem 
involved which must here be considered. The problem 

[285] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

is, granting the fact that thought and consciousness 
are substantial states embodied in radiant matter, or 
an ultra-microscopical condition of physical substance, 
how do we know that this substance will continue to 
exist as an embodiment even if consciousness con- 
tinues, after the death of the outward body. This 
problem will be considered in the following chapter. 



[286] 



CHAPTEE XXXIV 

Continuity of Life and Immateriality 
of Matter 

When in my previous work I first tentatively set 
forth the hypothesis which I have in this book under- 
taken to elaborate, I made the following statements: 
"Apparently we have all the essential factors of an 
after-death existence. All seemingly depends on the 
personal use we can make of these factors ; dependent 
on individual education, discipline, knowledge and de- 
sire. If we can so intensify the energy of the individ- 
ual will that we can bend the magical element, which 
forms the substance of its activity to the end we desire, 
it may be that when even all the visible, or even the im- 
mediately invisible units of the physical organism 
have expired and dissolved, there still survives a far 
more ultimate and subtle substance, though product 
of dissolving substances which have so long served us, 
yet still susceptible to the energy of the will, which 
from the beginning constituted the immediate energy 
that actuated it." 

And again I laid down this law as seemingly indi- 
cated by natural condition: ''The force of the per- 
sonal volitional energy exercised in radio-active par- 
ticles gives promise of a conquering personality which 
shall survive the decay of the coarser substance of 
the cell aggregates." 

My attention was called to a weak spot in the rea- 

[287] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

soning which I had advanced in that work by Profes- 
sor Lascelles Abererombrie, in the extended review he 
wrote for the Manchester Guardian, in England. He 
says: "Mr. Frank's conclusions are not scientifically 
sound. It is possible that the vehicle for the opera- 
tion of the personal ego in the cellular field of con- 
sciousness is maintained by means of radio-activity. 
Granting this we are also asked to grant that the per- 
sonal ego is itself contained in this concomitant radio- 
activity; and perhaps it may be done. Well, then, 
says Mr. Frank, here you have the ego contained in 
an ultra-material substance which, by its very nature 
is indestructible; therefore the ego may well be also 
indestructible. The ingenuity, of course, depends on 
the word "substance;" radio-activity is taken to be, 
like that which we usually call substance, something 
formal and defined, capable of continued existence in 
one condition, whereas it is really something in an 
inconceivably rapid and unlimited flux. The acti- 
vity of the ego cannot depend on radio-activity as a 
stationary emanation, but as a constant escaping liber- 
ation, a ceaseless change of the material into the ultra- 
material ; not in the radiant substance is the ego con- 
tained, but in the actual radiation, which requires cel- 
lular matter for its source. If this is really a true ac- 
count of personal activity it goes directly against Mr. 
Frank's desired conclusion; for what becomes of the 
ego when it has no more material to convert into ultra- 
material? We may admit his contention that in the 
human being are 'all the factors essential to the con- 
tinuity of personal existence ; ' what he does not show 
is that the factors maintain after physical death those 

[288] 



1 



CONTINUITY OF LIFE 

relations with each other whereby personality 
existed. ' ' 

I cannot deny that this is really an ingenious ob- 
jection to the theory advanced in this work and calls 
for a careful answer. I thank the writer for it, even 
more than I do for his statement that, * ' Nevertheless, 
the whole argument is one of the most interesting 
that has been suggested, and the book is by no means 
to be condemned for its final failure ; a failure, which 
only those who, like Mr. Frank, prefer science to phil- 
osophy, need regard as at all serious for the belief in 
personal immortality. Mr. Frank has amassed a large 
body of information, and manages to extract a great 
deal of suggestiveness from it. ' ' 

The point that he makes is, that if the ego resides 
in an atmosphere of electrons, or in the volatile eman- 
ation, there will come a time when it can have no fur- 
ther local habitation because the material from which 
the ultra-material substance flows, will have been ex- 
hausted. Radio-activity is now a permanent and uni- 
versal condition of all matter in Nature. That is, all 
matter is ceaselessly dissolving, not only in the sense 
of chemically disintegrating and disappearing in 
space, but in the sense of atomic dissolution. It is the 
condition of atomic dissolution that brings about the 
force, so-called, of radio-activity, and the impalpable 
and invisible substance known as its emanations. Says 
Duncan in ' ' New Knowledge ; " ' ' Radio-activity ' ' con- 
sists of ''particles flying off with inconceivable veloc- 
ity from bodies in their natural condition — bodies 
such as uranium, thorium and radium; and finally, 

. . . the soil and water itself emits them and 

[289] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

the air we breathe contains them. These bodies are 
invariably associated with matter and arise from mat- 
ter — from any form of matter under special condi- 
tions, and from special forms of matter under all con- 
ditions.'' (p. 150.) 

Atomic matter is ceaselessly dissolving and emitting 
these ceaselessly flying particles. These particles as- 
sume distinctive shapes and may become subject to 
the photographic plate. Now if it is true that these 
particles are flying off from the dissolution of the 
atoms contained in the cellular structure of the human 
organism, why does it necessarily follow that when 
the chemical dissolution of the organism transpires, 
i. e., when the body completely dissolves, that the ego 
will cease to therein express itself? We know what 
becomes of the chemical elements and atoms in the 
visible dissolution; they are simply freed and pass 
into space. But we know that though freed they 
come again and re-express themselves in other forms 
of life, duplicating their former relations. The atoms 
and elements that once went to form a rose return to 
make another rose ; the atoms of the apple return to 
form another apple and so on. 

What then becomes of the ultra-material particles, 
known as radio-activity, that fly off into invisibility 
and play such curious roles in Naturfe ? Can we think 
of them as annihilated ? That is impossible ; for there 
is in Nature no ultimate annihilation. 

They must keep on elsewhere to perform some dis- 
tinctive office. If it is true, as I have tried to show, 
that the ego is really co-existent with and active in 
the delicate substance or radio-active energy, which 

[290] 



CONTINUITY OF LIFE 

is emitted from the dissolution of the atoms of the 
living cells, then just as the atoms return to earth to 
re-compose sometime another living form, why on the 
same principle should not the invisible particles — • 
or stream of electrons — also elsewhere continue to be 
held together by the impress of the ego? 

The atom we know is a manufactured unit of invisi- 
ble matter. It has been millenniums coming. ''Atoms 
of matter are made up of the same negative charges or 
corpuscles, each aggregation of corpuscles being sur- 
rounded by a sphere of positive electricity.'* In short 
the atom of matter is a composition of positive and 
negative electricity formed at some stage in cosmic 
processes. 

Notwithstanding the fact that these ''foundation 
stones of the universe," are ceaselessly dissolving, 
they are likewise ceaselessly re-forming and that, too, 
in the identical relations which they formerly main- 
tained. Now, I ask, what is it in Nature that draws 
them again together? Why do the atoms of the rose 
, return sometime to re-make a rose ; etc ? Can it be for 
any other reason than that once, in time, having been 
brought together in these final relationships, when 
the separation comes, they carry in their essence the 
impress of the dissolved relations, that is the memory 
of the former conditions? 

Every form and organism in Nature, every fixed 
aggregation of atoms and molecules, is the conse- 
quence of the impress of memory sealed in the sub- 
stance revealed. If there were no memory in Nature 
there would be no order, no organization, no devel- 

[291] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

opment. Withont memory matter were unorganiz- 
able, and the universe were chaos. 

Memory, or shall we call it centripetal motion — 
the tendency to integrate — exists no less in the atom 
than in the element, no less in the molecule than in 
the cell, no less in the cell than in the entire multicel- 
lular body of a living animal. 

Now as memory is an essential, an inexpugnable 
property of matter it must also be the essential prop- 
erty of the corpuscles or electrons that constitute the 
units of matter. These electrons are the radio-active 
energy which is emitted in the dissolution of the atom 
— they constitute the substantial residence, as my 
theory assumes, of the human ego, itself. I have 
argued that this energy might continue to express 
the manifestation of the ego after the decease of the 
visible body. The continuity of the ego will depend 
on the intensity of the impress of the personal mem- 
ory — that is of the self -consciousness. The objection 
might here, however, be interposed that if the atom 
returns and re-establishes its former relations with 
other atoms to reproduce a specific substance or ele- 
ment, and does this because of its centripetal memory, 
then, for the same reason, the corpuscles or electrons 
of which the atoms are composed would also return 
with it, insomuch as they constitute the essence of the 
atom. Hence, my theory is exploded; for if the 
corpuscles return to assume former earthly relations, 
then they cannot continue their activities in a new 
plane of existence. 

This would indeed be a very valid and ruinous ob- 
jection did not two facts come to our relief. The first 

[292] 



CONTINUITY OF LIFE 

is, that the electrons never do return to the earthly re- 
lations; and the second is that even if they did they 
emit emanations which continue their existence inde- 
pendently for a long and perhaps endless duration. 

As to the first fact: — *'0f the destiny of the im- 
ponderable elements that are no longer matter" 
(electrons) says Le Bon, *'we are still entirely ig- 
norant. We know by experiment that they cannot 
again form the matter from which they were derived. 
Does the electric atom, which all modern ideas lead 
us to consider as a localized modification in the ether, 
preserve its individuality indefinitely?" ("Intra 
Atomic Energy," Rev. Scientifique, 4th Series, Vol. 
XX, No. 16, 17, 18; and Smithsonian Annual, 1903.) 

We see then that the electrons do not return to their 
original atoms from which they are derived and the 
above first objection is therefore void. 

However, even if they did return, as we shall soon 
see, there are emanations from these electrons with 
which we have to deal which give promise of indefinite 
individual existence. 

Can this ultra-material energy, this radio-active 
essence, exist free from the dissolving atom which 
emits it, and has it any permanency independent of 
its origin ? This is the core of the issue. That it be- 
comes independent of its source is shown in the eman- 
ations. Soddy tells us that when the radium com- 
pound is chemically treated, ** during the solution or 
heating, a gaseous substance, called the radium eman- 
ation, escapes. If arrangements are made to collect 
this gas, it will be found that, generally speaking, the 
whole of the radio-activity the radium has lost is pos- 
sessed by the gas." (''Matter and Energy" p. 213, 

21*-> [293] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

True, this emanation has but a comparatively brief 
existence. It is reabsorbed into its mother element. 
But it escaped. It was free and for a brief period 
lived an independent existence; and what is more, 
during that free existence exhibited properties that 
were utterly impossible to its original source. 

Some of these radio-active emanations exist for min- 
utes, days, months, years, as far as at present known. 
In short they cannot be weaned permanently from the 
mother element, because, as I put it, the atavistic 
memory is too strong, the attraction back to its source 
is still too irresistible. 

But these experiments have all been made with 
radio-active emanations from so-called inert substan- 
ces. Now if the emanations exist, as I have contended 
in this work, in the human organism, and if they are 
indeed the substantial expression of the intelligent 
and self-conscious ego, then why, even on purely phy- 
sical grounds, is it not reasonable to suppose that the 
inertia of the personal memory of the ego will be 
strong enough to preserve the integrity of the escaped 
emanation after the dissolution of the visible form? 

The physicists, indeed, tell us that in the transmu- 
tations which take place in the radium emanation X 
the fourth change is thought to last 200 years, and 
the duration of the iBnal product in the continuing 
transmutation can only be imagined. (See Duncan, 
New Knowledge, page 148, also Table of Radio-active 
Emanations, page 132.) 

Have we not here, then, the physical elements re- 
quired for a possible continuous existence of the ego ; 
namely, invisibility, potential permanence, potential 

[294] 



CONTINUITY OF LIFE 

snbstance, potential form or organization. And, fur- 
thermore, that this potential being is indeed substan- 
tial in Nature, and not an impossible creation, we may 
apprehend from the very nature of the electrons of 
which it is supposed to be composed. 

The electron, we are informed, has "mass;'' that is, 
in its motion **it drags along with it a portion of the 
surrounding ether" (Duncan). It is not made up of 
insubstantial spirit, a term which cannot be scienti- 
fically defined. 

Sometimes physicists struggle with this metaphysical 
proposition and they seem to make short work of it. 
To a scientist such a thing as a '*massless" body seems 
to be inconceivable. Soddy, for instance, in a moment 
of diversion, remarks, **A massless particle would be- 
long to that other world of 'spirits' or 'dreams,' the 
inhabitants of which are not 'conserved,' and the 
study of which belongs not to physical science. A 
massless particle, so far as can be seen, if it in any 
way acquire energy, however infinitesimal, would 
move at infinite velocity, and would, therefore, leave 
the universe behind it without the lapse of time. 
Whether or not future generations will find any room 
for massless particles, in their philosophy, the present 
can hardly conceive them to exist, or imagine how 
they could become known if they did." 

The philosophy, relative to a possible after life, 
which I have attempted in this work, is not, at least, 
divorced from scientific fundamentals, and is not pos- 
tulated on the supposition of beings that exist un- 
supported by a substantial basis. 

I have tried to show that granting all the discov- 

[296] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

eries of physicists it would seem that they have pre- 
sented facts which lay a groTindwork on which to 
build a possibility of after-existence without violating 
the logic of the material universe. 

For if it be true that the ego can continue to ex- 
press itself in the ultra-material substance which I 
have described in this work, then it will, howbeit 
wholly invisible, consist of a body thoroughly scien- 
tific in its nature. For the substance will be com- 
posed of electrons. 

Of this Soddy says : **It is just because the electron 
has a definite mass, even though it is by far the small- 
est of any known, and still is not a material particle, 
that its chief interest lies. Assuredly science has here 
penetrated one step further into the eternal verities. 
With many of the feelings of an airman, who has left 
behind him for the first time the solid ground, let us 
try to venture into this new region of science, of mass 
without matter.^* (''Matter and Energy," pp. 169, 
170.) (Italics by the author.) 

Here the scientist speaks almost like a metaphy- 
sician. It but proves how closely science is drawing 
to the edge of metaphysics, and yet not deserting any 
of its fundamentals. 

This is the paradoxical substance, an immaterial 
substance, which has mass, that I have conceived as 
the possible residence of the permanent post-mortem 
ego. 

But £is we are theorizing upon the possibility of an 
ethereal form of matter continuing to exist after the 
disappearance of the cellular organism of the human 
body, it might be well to call attention to what has 
been discovered to be the transmutation of matter. 

[296] 



CONTINUITY OF LIFE 

This is one of the most recent discoveries in physics 
and resulted from acquaintance with the nature of 
radio-activity of matter. This force of radio-activity 
seems to have the power of induction ; that is, of trans- 
planting its energy into substanees that are not natur- 
ally radio-active. ''In addition to giving off the 
alpha-rays or the positive ions possessed by the eman- 
ation," says Duncan, *'it has the additional very re- 
markable property of exciting activity in any sub- 
stance with which it comes in contact. This is the in- 
duced radio-activity discovered by Mme. Curie. This 
activity of surrounding objects, not otherwise radio- 
active, is due to the fact that the emanation in decay- 
ing breaks down into a third invisible and unweigh- 
able radio-active body which deposits itself upon 
neighboring bodies and which, apparently, is in the 
nature of a solid. Surrounding objects thus become 
radio-active. ' ' 

Thus far we observe that an invisible and unweigh- 
able form of matter transmutes itself by induction 
into another form that may be made visible and is 
solid. 

Duncan continues: ''This excited activity, since it 
is evolved from and results in the decay of the eman- 
ation, has been called Emanation X. The Emanation 
X has definite chemical properties for it can be dis- 
solved in some acids and not in others. If the acid 
in which the Emanation X dissolves be evaporated 
it is left behind on the dish and its radio-activity is 
unimpaired. ... It is not the emanation, for the rate 
of decay of its activity is markedly different from 
the rate of the decay of the emanation. It is a second 

[297] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

form of active matter generated from radium via the 
emanation.' ' (''New Knowledge," p. 123.) (Italics 
by the Author.) 

Here then we find that once radio-activity is gen- 
erated it has the property of exciting or inducing 
radio-active properties in other substances and there- 
by creating an emanation which possesses properties 
novel and independent, and of aggregating to itself 
its own form of material manifestation. It is a form 
of matter generated out of the invisible and unweigh- 
able emanation from radium (because of its radio- 
active nature). 

We find here, then, an energy or a substance which 
possesses the property of creating a wholly new sub- 
stance out of its own decay. 

Does not this seem to give us a hint, illusive, I 
grant, yet a hint, of what may take place in the ultra- 
material substance which, in this book, I have shown 
probably emanates from the decayed or dissolved cel- 
lular substance of the body in the process of death? 
May not its permanence he established by this very 
process of decay and induction, that is, by transmuta- 
tion? 

If it be a fact that there passes from the dissolved 
body, or there is left after it, an aggregation of cor- 
puscles (an aggregate of radiating electrons) which 
are the emanations of the radio-active energy of the 
dissolving atoms, may not these emanations create a 
totally new form of matter in the invisible sphere in 
which the sustained mental activities of the deceased 
earthly body may continue to manifest themselves ? 

If the contention in this work should prove correct, 

[298] 



CONTINUITY OF LIFE 

namely that the electrical corpuscles, or the electrons, 
are the actual instrumentalities in which consciousness 
and thought exist, and these electrons are a primary 
substance of indefinite duration, then why after the 
death of the mortal elements of the body, could not 
this remaining electronic body, in which consciousness 
inheres, transmute itself through the energy of its 
emanations into a firmer and more abiding substance, 
precisely as the resultant from the Emanation X of 
radium is transmuted into a solid by the way of an 
invisible and unweighable element ? 

I am not of course insisting that this is what actual- 
ly takes place after death, for naturally I nor any 
one else knows. I am merely trying to show that ap- 
parently according to laws and processes already dis- 
covered in Nature the method whereby it might be 
accomplished is indicated. If radium — a very hesLYy 
element, giving off radiant corpuscles, which are them- 
selves invisible and unweighable, changes into a still 
more marvellous emanation which has properties 
wholly different from radium or the radio-active 
emanations of radium, and then through still another 
emanation finally reveals itself as a new solid element, 
then why is it inconsistent to suppose that in death 
the radio-active energy of the decaying cells and 
atoms may transmute through emanations into a more 
permanent form of material expression howbeit still 
invisible to earthly senses? 

In short through the property of induced radio- 
activity, the body of electrons emanating from the 
dissolved atoms of the deceased fleshly body, may 
cause some other substance with which they come in 

[299] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

contact in the invisible ether to become radio-active, 
and this substance thus affected to give forth an eman- 
ation (X) which is itself of a solid or semi-solid na- 
ture. ''To the emanation X, the solid active body 
produced by the emanation and capable of settling on 
other bodies, the major part of the energy of radium 
must be ascribed." (Duncan.) 

Here then may be the correct answer to the objec- 
tion of my critic, namely, that "even granting the 
existence of the ultra-material (radio-active) sub- 
stance which passes from the dissolving body in death, 
what proof have we that such ultra-material substance 
may continue after its material source has forever 
vanished. * ' 

If Nature plays such wondrous tricks with solid 
and manifest matter, even before our very eyes, which 
we have only by the most delicate instruments but 
just detected, it should not seem beyond the attribute 
or prerogative of reason to conceive how she may 
perform similar tricks with the dead matter that dis- 
solves when we shuffle off the mortal coil. And there 
is still another lesson relative to the possibilities of 
an after-death existence taught, it seems to me, in this 
discovery of the transmutation of matter. 

The final product of radium through the emana- 
tions which it evolves, by radiation and induction, is 
an element wholly different than itself and permanent 
in Nature. It is helium. 

Helium belongs to that class of inactive elements 
which are free, in the ether, and unsusceptible of 
chemical assimilation. 

Now what follows may be wild and riotous, but this 

[ 300 ] 



CONTINUITY OF LIFE 

occurs to me : Why, if Nature can produce such a re- 
sult, could she not likewise out of the emanations 
from the dissolution of the solid flesh generate, finally, 
a wholly different substance, free, dissociated, and 
permanent like helium, which might constitute the 
indestructible body of the post-mortem consciousness 
of human beings? But without going into specific 
details as to a final form of substance which the con- 
sciousness or so-called soul might assume in an after 
life, I merely desire to point out that the processes in 
Nature are already at work which might generate a 
future permanent substance as an habilament of the 
soul in the invisible ether. 

We must bear in mind that the present elements of 
matter, seventy or eighty in number, are the last per- 
manent residue of a process of evolution and transmu- 
tation as old as time. Nature labored many myriads 
of millenniums before this final product resulted, that 
made possible the extant, manifest universe. (See 
Appendix F.) 

Now, not only has this discovery completely revol- 
utionized the notion of the origin and continuity of 
the universe which science is forced to contemplate 
today, but it seems to me it has a positive bearing on 
the possible destiny of the residue of a human life 
after the physical form has disappeared. For just 
as, until this modern discovery, physicists and astron- 
omers were forced to the conclusion that the earth 
and solar system were in a process of certain decay 
and after a few million years would all be consumed 
in a final conflagration, but now are compelled to 
think that, **a constructive influence is at work, op- 

[301] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR , 

posing this process, and the whole system may turn 
out to be a conservative one, limited with respect 
neither to the future nor the past, but proceeding 
through continuous cycles of evolution," as Soddy 
says, so, likewise, may we, because of these very dis- 
coveries, be forced to hold similar notions of cyclic 
evolutions of the essence of which a human life is com- 
posed and its destiny in infinite realms. 

For as we have now discovered the fundamental es- 
sence of matter and the universe, and as we learn that 
this essence is inherently indestructible, but ever 
lives by transmuting itself into variable residues of 
evolution, and as, from that fact, w« seem to be forced 
to conclude that the universe will never finally expire 
but has the inherent power ever to resuscitate itself 
after dissolving into the primary form of matter, why 
should we not draw hypothetically similar conclusions 
of the life of man which, in self-consciousness, thought 
and volition, as I have tried to show in this work, acts 
only in and through this primal essence of matter — 
the ultimate indestructible residue of aU that was 
once manifest in the living form? 

When that final stage is reached Nature begins its 
work all over again; the universe of matter has gone 
back to the primary form and substance from which 
it emanated myriads of millenniums ago, and must re- 
constract through cyclic stages of evolution matter 
again into its atomic character out of the first-born 
electrons. 

Why then should not the same thing take place in 
a formation of matter we call life, which is the most 
potent, capable, variable and transmorphogenetic of 

[ 302 ] 



CONTINUITY OF LIFE 

all organizations of matter; and when the chemical 
instrumentality through which this life was manifested 
dissolves (permitting thereby the complete escape of 
the primary electrons that made up the atoms of the 
chemical body) why should not the ** conservative 
work of Nature" go on and re-construct these elec- 
trons into new expressions of life. 

They cannot return again to the atom stage. May 
they not remain in the imponderable stage of matter 
where activities are at work, "the cause of which is 
at present almost beyond conjecture?" In short, if 
these primordial units of cosmic matter are released 
to begin their re-association and inter-relations anew, 
may not the life energy, of which they have shown in 
this planetary existence that they are susceptible, re- 
unite and organize them in ultra-planetary and in- 
visible activities? But that these electrons might not 
necessarily be associated in wholly new and uncom- 
plexioned organizations is manifest from the univer- 
sal law of memory which I have already stated. Would 
not these electrons in re-assembling be impelled and 
guided by the impress of the consciousness and per- 
sonality from which they emanated? 



[303] 



CHAPTER XXXV 

The Nature of Immortality 

Another critic reminds me that even continuity of 
life after death does not necessarily prove immortal- 
ity; it may be, after all but a postponed temporary 
existence. 

That is very true ; but the human ego is an organ- 
ized form of energy which aggregates to itself the 
substance essential to its immediate expression. Be- 
ginning, we might say in the amoeba, or a primary 
cell of life, the ego variously expresses itself through 
the transforming phases of energy that result from 
the association and aggregation of multiplex cells 
which finally constitute the organization of a human 
being. It manifests itself as sensation and emotion in 
the motor nerves and muscular tissues of the body ; as 
feeling and consciousness in the cerebral nervous sys- 
tem and as thought and reflection in the higher corti- 
cal cells. Now in all these different departments of 
the human organism, as well as in many others, the 
ego finds the instrument of its expression in varying 
forms of matter and energy which have been devel- 
oped in the course of human evolution. 

We have shown that the highest consciousness and 
mental action and especially the energy of the will, is 
manifested, by hypothesis, in the most rarified and 
marvellous of all forms of matter and energy yet dis- 
covered. The substance seems to be akin to that of 

[304] 



THE NATURE OF IMMORTALITY 

the emanation of radium — ultra-material, ultra-mi- 
croscopical, without weight, and with nothing left of 
the properties of matter but mass and inertia. Now 
what we have attempted in the argument is to show 
that this substance, evolved within the organism itself 
is the real seat and instrument of the ego acting self- 
consciously or unconsciously, that it is susceptible of 
persistence if the ego be strong enough to carry it 
forward beyond the grave after death. 

The process seems to be similar to the action of the 
electrons, or negative electrical charge, which carries 
along with it a bit of ether as it flies through space. 
Now this "bound ether" — the so-called mass of the 
electrical corpuscle^ — is vast or minute, persistent or 
temporary, according to the velocity of the electron 
or the charge of electricity.^ 

So if the ego have sufficient velocity — that is energy, 
conscious determinism, in one word, the will to live 
— to carry along with it, after the dissolution of the 
coarser body, the rarified radiations of matter in which 
it resides and acts while the body still lives, it will 
possess the last remaining essential of invisible mat- 
ter — namely, mass — to constitute the basis of its 
potential continuity. 

Now assuming that the ego has mass, and is thus 
capacitated to aggregate a substantial body, after 
death, will it be able even then to continue on for- 
ever ? That is the problem my critic suggests. 

The answer is evident. We have by no means found 
the last reducible unit of matter in the electrical cor- 

^ "Electrical mass is not strictly constant; it is a function of speed." 

Sir Oliver Lodge, "Modern Views of Matter." 
2See Le Bon's "The Evolution of Matter," pp. 189, f£. 

[305] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

pusele." What we now call an atom of matter is sim- 
ply a unit composed of two charges of electricity, 
positive and negative, which science has found the 
means of separating so as to free the negative charge. 

The infinite substances of Nature are merely the 
result of the association of fixed number of electrons 
moving around about a centre positively charged. 

The only difference between oxygen and carbon, 
for instance or any other of the nearly 80 chemical 
elements, consists in the amount of the electrons and 
the rate of their velocity. Primarily they are identi- 
cally the same in essence. 

Thus if the difference between aU chemical elements 
lies merely in the unstable factors of number and mo- 
tion, it occurred at once to scientific thinkers that a 
transmutation between the elements was possible, and 
thus the ancient dream of the alchemists became real- 
ized. This has now been initially accomplished, as for 
instance, iq the evolution of helium from the radium- 
emanation. 

The point I am reaching is this. If even in this 
crude life of matter science has discovered that there 
is only one primal substance and that the manifest 
phases of that substance are variable with the energy 
which inheres in it; that, in short, the form and ex- 
pression of the substance are always changing and 

3 "It is well to remember that thought cannot place a limit on the 
size of the particles of which matter is supposed to consist; and 
that in strict logic these particles themselves must be held to 
possess a structure. 

The modern tendency is to conceive of an order of particles smaller 
than the atom, of which it is built up; but at present questions 
regarding the structure of the smaller particles, which have been 
termed electrons, are generally ignored." Sir William Ramsay's 
"Elements and Electrons." (Harper's Living Library, p. 14, 

[3061 



THE NATURE OF IMMORTALITY 

susceptible of ever more rarified phases ; then why is it 
not reasonable to suppose that the ego itself, by force 
of its own energy, may have sufficient transforming 
power to assimilate and organize for its manifestation 
ever more' refined forms of matter resulting from 
transmutation ? 

The everlasting continuity of the ego, then, would 
be measured only by its capacity of conscious pene- 
tration into the indestructible and universal energy. 
Primal substance is infinitely variable. It is plastic 
and responds instantly to the energy that evolves it. 

In a crude way we may use the ocean as an illustra- 
tion. The water of which it is composed responds to 
every energy or influence that impinges it. From 
within and without it is constantly battered by forces 
that ceaselessly transform its phases of expression. 
We may follow it from the heavy drops of water that 
constitute its units and united make possible its vast 
manifestation, tiU. each drop shall be separated and 
in solitude constitute but an infinitesimal factor of its 
immensity. Each drop shall vanish into ephemeral 
vapor, and that too shall pass into invisible elements 
in Nature 's chemical laboratory. 

Now let us imagine a form of vapor precisely dupli- 
cating the body of the ocean spreading like a phantom 
above it. Then beyond the vapory ocean a re-dupli- 
cated expression or simulacrum consisting of the 
chemical elements into which the vapor passes. Then 
still beyond this simulacrum another consisting of 
the chemical atoms of which the elements are consti- 
tuted ; while far away yet simulating the form of the 
ocean we shall imagine the existence of the electrical 

[307] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 



1 



units of which the atoms are composed; in short an 
ocean composed wholly of primary electrons. 

Now the point I am reaching is this : The finer the 
phase of matter into which the original water passes 
makes it continuously more sensitive or susceptible 
to more delicate forms of energy. There seems in Na- 
ture to be no limit to the possibility of expression; it 
all depends upon the durability of the energy that 
is exercised. 

Now whether the ego, like the ocean, shall go on 
ceaselessly re-expressing itself by cyclic returns to 
manifest forms of earthly expression, or shall find ever 
finer and more rarified elements of matter through 
which to reveal its presence in unimaginable spheres 
of space, is a purely philosophical proposition that 
necessarily appeals to imagination or predilection. 

Whether invisible immortality, or reincarnation, is 
the manner Nature uses to express immortal existence 
is not involved in this discussion. I am seeking mere- 
ly to show that there is a physical and logical basis 
for after-death existence. I by no means claim either 
by what I have just said, or by the contents of this 
work, that the argument proves immortality. I have 
merely undertaken to show that there is no physical 
or scientific inconsistency in the possibility of im- 
mortal existence. 

Nevertheless, I opine that when we speak of im- 
morality as an endless, an everlasting existence, we 
scarcely realize what that means. There is nothing in 
Nature that is static; everything expresses itself in 
varying and changing form. We can realize or con- 
ceive how the ego might go on endlessly transforming 

[308] 



THE NATUBE OF IMMORTALITY 

the expression of itself in ever-refining phases of 
matter or energy; yet we cannot conceive of it as an 
infinite process, because we cannot conceive, or at least 
realize, in thought, what infinity is. 

We have no other way of thinking of immortality, 
save as a continued existence. To stretch that exist- 
ence into unqualified infinity is impossible of realiza- 
tion by the human mind. 



[309] 



CHAPTER XXXYI 

The Moral Value of Scientific 
Research 

Whether the argument advanced in this treatise 
will be of consolation or help to the reader will, of 
course, depend on his predilection and desire. If he 
be satisfied there is no proof of immortality, he will 
still continue to think so after reading these pages; 
for a man ' ' convinced against his will is of the same 
opinion still." If one is already satisfied and thor- 
oughly cognizant of the fact of immortality, then the 
argument will be to him a work of supererogation. 
For his faith is sufficient unto him. But if one is 
still unconvinced and willing to pursue the truth as 
a possible discovery, favorable or unfavorable, the 
study of these pages may prove valuable. 

Nevertheless, whether we have faith that we shall 
live again, or are satisfied the possibility is a pure 
myth, neither form of belief can possibly affect the 
fact in Nature. She alone can and must ultimately re- 
ply and until we hear her reply as final no knowledge 
of the subject can be efficient, nor will any form of 
faith, negative or affirmative, end man's persistent 
search. 

What we need is a mind prepared, without preju- 
dice, for truth. We should be willing to hear Nature's 
message whithersoever it may lead us. It may be 

[310] 



VALUE OF SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH 

the solution of all is as Shakespeare portrayed in the 
picturesque language of Prospero: 

These are actors 

were spirits and 

Are melted into air, into thin air, 
And like the baseless fabric of this vision, 
The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces. 
The solemn temples, the great globe itself, 
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve. 
And, like this insubstantial pageant, faded, 
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff 
As dreams are made on, and our little life 
Is rounded with a sleep. 

There will ever be those who wiU be thus satisfied 
and cease to cudgel their brains. And if, indeed, this 
is the final voice of Nature we must be still and listen, 
ready to bow in acquiescence. 

Nevertheless, it will be to many a consolation and 
an inspiration to feel that there may be an affirmative 
response in Nature, if man but use his reason based 
on the premises of her message. Those of us, how- 
ever, who have felt that the profound answer of the 
ages and man's scientific awakening have but left the 
pall of gloom and disappointment, assuring us that 
there is no beyond, may, still, not impatiently hearken 
to a revision of conclusions resting on once relevant 
facts, now abrogated by more recent discovery. And 
if that later voice should proclaim the possibility if 
not the probability of an after life, we might with 
Tennyson listen to the ' ' Silent Voices, ' ' that seem to 
speak in the final hour. 

When the dumb Hour, clothed in black, 
Brings the dreams about my bed, 

[311] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

Call me not so often back, 
Silent Voices of the dead, 
Toward the lowland ways behind me, 
And the sunlight that is gone : 
Call me, rather, Silent Voices, 
Forward to the Starry Track, 
Glimmering up the heights beyond me. 
On, and always on ! 

I have purposely avoided the religious attitude — 
the attitude of metaphysical faith — in this discussion, 
because I preferred to have the judgment of the court 
of scientific knowledge, based purely upon the facts 
and deductions warranted by discovery. 

Some may regard the discussion, therefore, as cold 
and useless in that it may fail to awaken the spiritual 
vision of the reader. But of this I am assured that 
if there be in the heart of any a predisposition in 
favor of a belief in immortality the arguments and 
method of the preceding pages will not cause it to 
fade or decline ; whereas it is possible that some, who 
have heretofore discarded the thesis as unworthy of 
consideration on account of their consciousness of 
Nature's negative response, may through the presen- 
tation herewith made, feel compelled to reconsider 
and once more seek a solution of the profound enigma. 

But whether we be mortal only, or, perchance, also 
immortal, the use, we make of the present life is the 
burden which we should feel the weightiest upon our 
hearts. We can cause our career to be so ugly, dis- 
reputable and accursed that its immortality would 
be a stench and an insult to all who witnessed it. Or 
we can compel a radiance of ineffable beauty to en- 
swathe our memories which humanity will evermore 
[312] 



VALUE OF SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH 

court and adore. To live hereafter and leave a worth- 
less life behind is but to add insult to the injury we 
have inflicted upon humanity. But to live always in 
the joy of grateful memories that well in the hearts 
of those who knew us once, even though never their 
eyes shall again behold us, is to be endued with an 
immortality more enduring than decaying monu- 
ments, as unending as returning years. 

Less philosophical than the contemplation of Pros- 
pero, less gratifying to intellectual predilection than 
the famed soliloquy of Hamlet, but far more human, 
far more personally inspiring are Shakespeare's own 
words on Death and the possibility of slaying it with 
the sword of truth and the conquests of noble charac- 
ter. 

Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth. 
Fooled by those rebel powers that thee array, 
Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth, 
Painting thy outward walls so costly gay? 
Why so large cost, having so short a lease, 
Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend? 
Shall worms, inheritors of this excess. 
Fat up thy charge? Is this thy body's end? 
Then, soul, live thou upon thy servant's loss, 
And let that pine to aggravate thy store: 
Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross; 
Within be fed, without be rich no more. 
So shalt thou feed on Death, that feeds on men. 
And, Death once dead, there's no more dying 
then. 
(Sonnet CXLVI) 

So to conquer death were indeed a noble virtue and 
achievement. It may be that it is the only way that 
Man can conquer the dread demon. If so, the fruit 
[313] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAB 

of faith in this life is not of sufficient value for man 
to be made the dupe of disappointment. 

For it cannot be denied that the frailty of man has 
been the need of the cleric. Long has man been held 
in the grip of metaphysical obfuscation because he 
dared not think for himself or deny what seemed to 
him to be untrue. His only rescue is to discover truth 
for himself; and to this end there is but one servant 
and friend of man, and that is the power and pene- 
tration of unbiased scientific research. For through 
Science speaks Nature and her voice alone can ease 
the hearts pining for knowledge or calm the fret of 
doubt. 



[314] 



CHAPTER XXXVir 

The Instinct of Immortal Life 

The gave is indeed a riddle and who shall solve it? 
Evermore the perplexity of the puzzle troubles the 
thoughtful mind and adds zest to the curiosity of 
death. Who but asks himself continually, "What 
shall come after." Instinctively at the brink of the 
grave, we repeat Tolstoi's comment on its character, 
when Nikita, in "Master and Man," "died in his own 
house and was laid, as he wished, beneath the icon, 
with a lighted wax taper in his hand; . . . sincerely 
rejoicing that he was passing from this life to that 
other life which had yearly and hourly become clearer 
and more alluring to him. Is it better or worse for 
him there, where he has awakened after his real death ? 
Was he enchanted, or has he found there exactly what 
he expected? We shall all know soon." 

Perhaps we shall and perhaps we shall not. For 
there is yet the alternative that the sleep may be eter- 
nal and neither Nikita nor we shall ever awake. 
Nevertheless, the curiosity that the sure event of 
death inspires is ceaseless in the human mind. It is 
as alluring and illusive as a dream I myself once ex- 
perienced. 

I had been ill, in my dream, and was pronounced in- 
curable by the doctor. I lingered for awhile, till one 
day I knew that I was dying. No fear seized me at 
all but an eager, overpowering curiosity devoured me. 

[315] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

I felt somehow that I was slipping out of my body 
from my feet upwards. I studied the ascent of the 
death march with curious expectancy ; much as a sci- 
entist wishing to learn the effect of liquor would trace 
its results in the body on and on till intoxication con- 
fused his senses. So I watched the ascent and certain 
conquest of death proceed through my body. 

"It is coming higher and higher, ' ' I kept saying to 
myself. "Now it has passed the groins, and now the 
heart and lungs ; 0, it is coming up higher and higher ; 
it is almost to my head; heavens, it is entering my 
head ; soon it will pass out above my head and then, ''' 
I was saying to myself, "I shall know the great 
truth, I shall discover the age-long secret; I shall 
know," and just as the sensation seemed to touch 
the crown of my head, I — awoke — much to my dis- 
gust and confusion. 

But the dream taught me a lesson; it taught me 
how death may be met calmly, philosophically, sensi- 
bly. It is a fate we must all endure; and it should 
cause no qualms of fear in the heart but only antici- 
pations of sweet rest and sensible repose. We should 
meet it as Walt Whitman in his carol to death : 

Come, lovely and soothing Death 

Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, arriving, 

In the day, in the night, to all, to each, 

Sooner or later, delicate Death ! 

Prais'd be the fathomless universe. 

For life and joy, and for objects and knowledge 

curious 
And for love, sweet love — But praise ! praise ! praise ! 
For the sure-enwinding arms of cool-enf oldiag Death ! 

[316] 



THE INSTINCT OF IMMORTAL LIFE 

Dark Mother, always gliding near, with soft feet. 
Has none chanted for thee a chant of fullest welcome ? 
Then I chant it for thee — I glorify thee above all; 
I bring thee a song that when thou must indeed come, 
come unfalteringly. 

Approach strong Deliveress ! 

When it is so, — when thou hast taken them, I joyously 

sing the dead — 
Lost in the loving, floating ocean of thee, 
Loved in the flood of thy bliss, Death ! 

There is, however, one other possible solution of the 
perplexing problem of potential immortality that may 
appeal to the wisdom of scientific research. Whether 
the alleged instinct of immortality — the feeling that 
we must always live because we live now — is an in- 
dication of an immortality in another sphere, of which 
we are the heirs, or whether such instinct be nothing 
more than the natural issue of the fact of existence, 
because we cannot possibly realize the actuality of 
death ; there is, nevertheless, the necessity of scientifi- 
cally interpreting and dealing with this feeling. It 
may possibly not point to the reality of a life unend- 
ing in another sphere but it may have serious indica- 
tions and prophetic forecasts relative to the realm in 
which we now exist. 

We must not forget that many scientific discoveries 
have been the result, as I have said heretofore, of cer- 
tain vague instincts or feelings of the race, which, be- 
cause of its ignorance, it tinged with a mystical color- 
ing. When in the course of time the race discovered 
the error of its mystical interpretation it found out to 
its amazement that, however erroneous the interpreta- 

[317] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

tion may have been, the persistent instinct led finally 
to a genuine discovery in Nature — to the discovery 
of a new law or a new range of phenomena. Myths 
were, in truth, the precursors of natural science/ 

It is also a remarkable fact that always along with 
the approaching discovery of some marvellous truth 
in Nature, there have followed the suttlers of pretense 
and mystification. For long periods of human history 
science was entirely submerged or buried because of 
the prevalent religious or mystical phase of thought 
that precluded all rational interpretation. 

This was the state of the world for a century or 
more antecedent to the Renaissance. But during the 
advent of the new knowledge, or the resuscitation of 
ancient learning and classicism, all Christendom was 
invaded with a flood of mystical lore, which, too, was 
a sort of renaissance from a far more ancient and pro- 
found historical source than that of the revival of 
Grecian lore. The middle ages are the hot-bed of all 
those soul-sick ventures in the vistas of the imagina- 
tion that appealed to hearts worn and weary with 
disappointment in a Faith which they beheld vanish- 
ing before their bewildered gaze. 

It is noticeable that such a state of human exper- 

iPrimitive man endeavors to propitiate the powerful spirit by sorcery, 
knovrledge of which is only given to the medicine man or to the 
priest and is not granted to other mortals. The means of utiliz- 
ing the forces of nature which we hope to acquire by studying 
nature and natural phenomena, primitive man endeavors to gain 
by magic. In a certain sense magic is therefore the precursor of 
natural science, and the myths and lore, upon which the practice 
of magic is based, correspond to a certain extent to our scienti- 
fic theories. Myths are, according to Andrew Lang, just as much 
based upon primitive science, resting on supposition, as upon 
primitive religious conceptions. ■ We easily comprehend that 
these suppositions started from observations of every day life, 
and it is not difficult to divine which observations were particu- 
larly concerned." (Arrhenius's, "The Life of the Universe" — 
Harper's Living Library, page 14.) 

[318] 



THE INSTINCT OF IMMORTAL LIFE 

ience, such a psychological confusion, illuminated 
with strangely alluring gleams of transient truth, oc- 
curs always at the time of the breaking up of an an- 
cient and effete form of religion or philosophy, and 
when a permanent and demonstrable truth is to be 
divulged empirically to the knowledge of man. 

Such was the state of things in ancient Greece and 
Rome, at the time of the decay of their philosophies 
and religions; such was the state in the Roman Re- 
public at the advent of the Christian epoch; such 
again was the state of the human mind during the 
middle ages when the revival of learning was dawn- 
ing on the horizon of history ; such again is precisely 
the state of the human mind at the present hour since 
Darwin and the new knowledge of modern science 
have beamed on the race. 

While a very minute portion of the world of cul- 
ture, proportionately, is devoting itself to rational 
interpretations and empirical discoveries, the vast 
horde of the pretentious followers of culture have 
turned willing ears to the illusive strains of the imag- 
ination that lead the unwary into wildernesses of de- 
ceiving will o' the wisps and deserts of misguiding 
mirages. 

And yet, as I have said, the consolatory fact that 
seems always to accompany these temporary delusions 
is that they seem unexpectedly at last to fetch up in 
a genuine natural discovery that benefits humanity. 

The mysticism of the middle ages flirted with gen- 
uine science and, to its own amazement, led away 
from vague astrological prognostications to a scienti- 
fic knowledge of the heavens, and from mystical un- 

[319] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

ions of base and pure metals to a genuine chemistry 
that has revolutionized human thought and industry. 

Mjrthology had long forecast the mystery of the 
gleaming lightning, but science demanded a Gilbert 
and Franklin to seize the mythic Mercury from 
the skies and transmute him into a physical instru- 
mentality for the benefit of the human race. 

The transmutation of the species had long been fore- 
told in the vague mythological aspects of Centaurs 
and mermaids and hamadryads, but not till a Lamarck 
and a Darwin came to read the truth for us did hu- 
manity know the real meaning of these ancient dreams 
that sprung instinctive from the heart of man. 

Human minds had ever felt their mutual kinship, 
and across the distant spaces yearned to interchange 
their thoughts without the intervention of physical 
instruments, and hence the creation of spirits and 
supernatural agencies ; but not till a Bell and an Edi- 
son magically made the dream a possibility through 
physical instruments was the curiosity of the race 
even partially satisfied. 

This line of reasoning leads to another view of 
natural possibilities relative to the individual lines 
of men than what has been heretofore contemplated. 

Perhaps the instinct of immortal life in the heart 
of man grows not only out of the fact that living he 
cannot possibly realize not living; but from the pro- 
phetic foregleam of the ultimate triumph of the life 
that now is and its permanent continuity on this plane. 
May it be that not only shall man, the individual, 
continue to live on this plane in the memory of those 
he leaves behind and in the monuments of his deeds 

[320] 



THE INSTINCT OF IMMORTAL LIFE 

and character, but that he himself shall verily con- 
tinue a physical, individual, constant personality, 
clothed in the fleshy garb of earth ? 

This is, of course, a bold and at first offensive 
thought to the sane and rational mind. Yet we must 
not permit experience and convention to force us 
from the contemplation of a possibility merely be- 
cause it has not before appealed to the understanding 
and reflection of man. 

Perhaps it may be in the ages to come the benefac' 
tions of scientific discovery will have so advanced and 
increased that man, the individual, will have discov- 
ered the deeply-buried secrets of planetary life, and 
its potential sustenance through as yet undiscovered 
foods and resuscitating elements, so that the ancient 
dream of an eternal life in an unfrequented "bourne" 
will be realized in the fulfillment of its possibilities 
on this now mortal plane. 

Though nothing stranger than this has as yet ever 
transpired in the experience of scientific discovery, 
yet its realization is even now not too vaguely inti- 
mated by the present advance of knowledge. For it 
is certainly not offensive to scientific thought, realiz- 
ing what such a biological wizard as Carel has accom- 
plished with the primordial and the complex organic 
forms of inferior life, to forecast similar possibilities 
in metazoans of far more complex organization, ulti- 
mating in the supreme triumph of perpetuating on 
this planet the individual lives of human beings. 

It is a dream, of course, as vague at present as the 
dream of a future heaven where immortal spirits 
dwell, yet as all vast knowledge and discovery in the 

[ 321 ] ♦ 



THE CHALLENGE OP THE WAB 

experience of research has usually begun in distant 
intimations, it may be that the slight hint of the con- 
tinuity of individual life which recent biological ex- 
perimentation has divulged may forecast a similar 
success with experiments on the secret of the life of 
so-called human mortals. 

Science has now discovered how to compel the in- 
definite continuity of vital organs when extracted 
from the organic whole of a living animal ; her next 
step may be the very likely discovery of how to com- 
pel the continuity of the organic life as a whole with- 
out extracting the organs, through an indefinite period 
of existence. If it should so turn out that some Carel 
will discover the way to make a cat or a dog or a 
guinea pig live on and on, by merely supplying the 
correct food for its sustenance, so that the historic 
period of planetary life will be abrogated, and such 
an animal may be forced to live as long as man may 
desire ; it will require but little more understanding of 
the mysteries of Nature to revolutionize the possibili- 
ties of human existence on this planet. 

We know already that longevity could be vastly in- 
creased if we but understood the essential chemical 
reactions to the intake of our food in our present ex- 
perience. Not understanding this we are subject to all 
sorts of ailments, to disease and to death after a com- 
paratively brief period of existence. Undoubtedly we 
kill ourselves long before we should have died, merely 
because we are ignorant of the food we should eat. 
When this law shall be understood and submitted to 
by man he will live for many more decades than his 
present experience permits. 

[322] 



THE INSTINCT OF IMMORTAL LIFE 

Carel won success where Maupas and others failed 
because he invented the proper solution whereon the 
minute forms of life could continue their existence; 
and discovered the necessary reactions that the food 
supply would cause in the extracted organs of the an- 
imals on which he experimented. The proper food or 
chemical solution is the thing that is needed. When 
man shall learn how to appropriate out of Nature the 
very things he needs for the continuity of individual 
life then there seems no good reason for doubting that 
he can continue such an existence through as long 
and as indefinite a period as he may demand. 

At such time each man's life will be in his own 
hand ; he may live or die as he chooses. Whether such 
a destiny or possibility is a consummation devoutly 
to be wished, or whether such long continuity of life 
would make universal hari kiri the common fashion, 
is, of course, a contemplation that does not lie within 
the scope of our discussion. But that the success of 
recent biological experiments has opened vast and 
impenetrable vistas, inviting man to eager research 
and far-reaching possibilities, none can question. 

It may be that as the dream of angel's wings ma- 
terialized in the wings of aeroplanes, the dream of the 
immortality of the soul may issue in the indefinite con- 
tinuity of planetary life, or the immortality of the 
flesh. 

If ever such an epoch shall lie within the possible 
conquest of the genius of man, how utterly different 
will be the common view of death, of life, of human 
art and toil, than what we now endure! Death will 
not then be the all-conquerer, but life will be, indeed, 

[323] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

the supreme inspirer. And a new song will then be 
on all the lips of men, utterly different from that 
in common vogue at present, so well expressed by- 
Mrs. Hemans. 

Leaves have their time to fall, 

And flowers to wither at the North-wind's breath, 

And stars to set — but all. 

Thou hast all seasons for thine own, oh ! Death. 

"We know when moons shall wane. 
When summer birds from far shall cross the sea. 
When Autumn's hue shall tinge the golden grain — 
But who shall teach us when to look for thee ? 



[324] 



CHAPTER XXXVIII 

The Gateway to Another Sphere 

IF, however, the grand climax of earthly existence 
were that we must be coerced to indefinite and un- 
ending planetary life, what an imaginary tragedy of 
woe would confront and begloom the mind ! Who could 
think comfortably of living always on this earth? 

Of course we must contemplate an improved and 
ever-happier state of existence if earthly life is to 
continue; for the genius and invention of man will 
ever develop and be utilized for the benefaction of 
the race. 

Yet even with such a prospect where is the promise 
of bliss and contentment? Looking back across the 
vistas of the past how much is man to be encouraged 
by the progress that has been made? Is he really so 
to deceive himself as to insist that for the last thousand 
or two thousand years there has been such genuine 
development that the race is today so much happier 
and more contented than it was in preceding ages ? 

Man has more possessions, more pleasures, more 
physical acquisitions, more triumphal mental achieve- 
ments added to his glory, it is true, than in the ages 
past. But with all these additions to his power and 
possibilities of pleasure has man yet found such con- 
tentment on this earth that he yearns for the contin- 
uity of life here with its thousand radiant hopes and 
promises ? 

[325] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

After all, what is there within the narrow compass 
of each individual life, however triumphal be its ca- 
reer, that spells immortal joy and the gladness of ex- 
istence ? How soon is it all spent in the gloom of re- 
ceding memory; how soon does the crown of honor 
melt in the furnace of the passing years? 

There on the darkened death bed lies the brain, 
That flared three seventy times in several years. 
It cannot lift the silly hand again. 
Nor speak nor sing; it neither sees nor hears. 
And muffled mourners put it in the ground 
And then go home, and in the earth it lies, 
Too dark for vision and too deep for sound, 
The million cells that made a good man wise. 
Yet for a few short years an influence stirs, 
A sense or wraith or essence of him dead. 
Which makes insensate things its ministers 
To those beloved, his spirit's daily bread. 
Then that, too, fades ; in book or deed a spark 
Lingers; then that, too, fades; then all is dark.^ 

One can scarcely imagine a condition of existence 
here that would make life lovable always and an en- 
viable dream. And yet if one is asked if one would 
die, almost the invariable answer is a fervent prayer 
for existence, in spite of all the trials and sufferings 
one must endure. If the instinct and passion of life 
were not the strongest inspiration of humanity the 
race long since would have committed universal sui- 
cide ; for there is not one that is contented, no, not one. 

The inspiration of the poets in all ages, from the 
lamentations of the scripture singers to the last singer 
that lingers today in the banquet hall of human 

^John Masefield. 

[326] 



THE GATEWAY TO ANOTHER SPHERE 

psalmody, has been the pain and suffering of the hu- 
man heart, the utter vacuity of human life. 

In spite of all joys, triumphs, development, prog- 
ress, there is something about this life of flesh and 
earth that disappoints, shrivels, cramps and suffocates 
the free spirit of man. 

He feels instinctively that there must be another 
world, another chance, another act, in the little drama 
of existence, that shall permit of wider effort, and in- 
vite with a more assuring gladness than the short, 
though sometimes exciting, years he is suffered here 
to endure. 

Therefore looms the dream, the irrepressible dream 
of an after life. It may be a dream, all a dream, and 
that, indeed, all life is such stuff as dreams are made 
on. It may be that as man came from an invisible 
source, one glimpse backward into which is never 
permitted him, so he may go forward into oblivion, 
in whose gloom he shall be forever buried. 

Yet he cannot believe it, much as he seeks to con- 
vince himself. He is haunted, tantalized, persecuted, 
with the feeling that he shall live on; that the grave 
is not the end. 

What I have attempted, doubtless feebly, in these 
pages, has been simply to indicate that this feeling 
is not all illusion, but mayhap founded in prophetic 
fact. Nature seems to suggest in the intimations, 
which I have attempted to point out, that there may 
be ground of hope for such an existence, on a plane 
of matter whose laws are so utterly diverse to those 
of this life, that they are almost unrealizable by the 
imagination. 

[327] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

Always the picture of the fish in the water and the 
fish in the air confronts the mind. How could the 
fish live in the air ; how could a fish, even with imag- 
ination, conceive the air. Its realm is so utterly be- 
yond all the intimations of its experience, that it could 
by no means anticipate its possibility. 

Something like this is the attitude of man toward 
that realm of the possible invisible world, where there 
function natural laws whose operations are as diverse 
to and contradictory of ours as the laws of the air are 
to those of water. 

And yet wholly unlike the state of the fish, save 
only as a faint suggestion may be given by one of its 
flying species, is the state of man ; for he has discerned 
already, in the present experience, certain intimations 
and forecasts of the elements that there prevail, of 
the powers that there transcend his ordinary powers 
here. 

Resting upon these suggestions, and the anticipa- 
tory experience which contact with subtle and illusive 
elements is gradually divulging to him, man can 
vaguely glimpse a possible realm where the weight 
and limitations of the flesh might be sloughed, where 
the spirit of mental energy might function with less 
restraint, where space and time, as we now know it, 
are no more, where death, though occurring,->-'?s but 
introductory to resurrection, and where conscious 
existence may overcome the barriers that fret the 
heart and inflame the brain in the struggles for exist- 
ence on this transitory planet. 

If, then, the pursuit of natural science, and the 
principles it reveals in Nature, which we have at- 

[ 328 ] 



THE GATEWAY TO ANOTHER SPHERE 

tempted in this treatise to traverse, lend any color of 
assurance to such prophetic possibilities, perhaps the 
labor is not all lost, and more capable and persistent 
minds may be able hereafter to carry on the sugges- 
tions to a more complete realization. 

If the theory advanced in this treatise should seem 
absurd and untenable, a moment's consideration will 
probably produce an altered conviction. 

It is manifest that if anything of us remains over 
after death it must be some form of invisible sub- 
stance, for all that is visible dissolves in dust. 

When we are born into this life, we now know that 
we come with no newly-created frame of matter, but 
in an invisible frame of vital substance that has de- 
scended to us from our ancestry. We now know that 
there is, physically speaking, an immortal substance 
passing on from generation to generation, an unbrok- 
en river of life-energy that flows on through human- 
ity, and which has flowed on from the first expression 
of life upon this planet. 

But a few years ago any such theory would have 
been scoffed at and laughed out the courts of science. 
But practically every biologist of standing now ac- 
cepts the theory. Yet it looks almost like a contradic- 
tion of natural law. For everywhere matter dissolves 
and i+s fixed forms of energy are dissipated. That 
there should be one form of energy, the vital form, 
one form of substance, living matter, that never dies 
upon this planet unless it meets with accident, is so 
extraordinary that at first it was almost universally 
rejected. 

But the form of substance in which the energy of 

[ 329 ] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

life acts and manifests itself is itself wholly invisible, 
beyond the reach of the microscope. That it exists 
is evidenced by the facts and demanded by the logic 
of biology. Neverthelss, it cannot be detected as a 
physical fact, and must be accepted as a logical 
necessity. 

I am not here, of course, referring to microscopical 
protoplasm, but to that ulterior, plasma-substance, 
that is the original from which structural and micro- 
scopical protoplasm evolves. 

Here then is a distinct fact of the greatest im- 
portance. All organic life upon this planet begins in 
an ultra-microscopical form of substance ; a substance 
that is infinitesimal in proportion and invisible in 
Nature. 

The other fact of the greatest importance is that 
that substance is immortal and has invisibly descend- 
ed from an ancestry that reaches back to the initiation 
of planetary life. When an organic form of life ac- 
tually expires, then, speaking physically, a portion of 
it remains over and descends through appropriate 
channels into a subsequent form of life. 

Why then is it beyond Nature or contradictory of 
analogy that when the mortal frame expires and dis- 
solves in the dust, there should remain over an invisi- 
ble, infinitesimal unit of vitality, whose nature is such 
that it can no longer manifest itself on this plane 
of material activity but must reveal itself in forms of 
activity on a more refined and rarefied plane of 
matter f 

I think we have shown both in this treatise and in 
the former one (Psychic Phenomena, Science and Im- 

[330] 



THE GATEWAY TO ANOTHER SPHERE 

mortality) that the vital force and especially the prin- 
ciple of intelligence operates within the present or- 
ganism through an ultra-material agency, whose laws 
are wholly contradictory of the laws of ordinary mat- 
ter, and which in its very nature is indestructible and 
immortal. 

This then may well be the substance which re- 
mains over from the expired coarser organism. It 
may enter on the invisible plane of matter but as 
an invisible, infinitesimal unit (precisely as the primal 
unit of organic matter appears on this planet). Out 
of the original dot of microscopical protoplasm, 
evolves all the wonder and multitudinousness of 
planetary life. Why then out of the invisible unit 
of radio-active (or other form of invisible) energy 
may not the continuity of the principle of intelli- 
gence or consciousness after death continue to operate ? 

It seems to me clearly that along this line of inves- 
tigation and study must be found the solution of the 
problem of the future life. If discovery should fur- 
ther prove to us the actuality of this theory and it 
should be shown that a form of future life continued, 
then we see how it might so continue without doing 
violence to any law or principle of Nature. 

But if true the fact would probably make us revise 
our notion of the nature and conditions of the future 
life. 

For if the future expression of life shall be as I 
have indicated then it is apparent we do not arise 
from the grave full formed and fledged for the con- 
scious continuity of another life. What we would do 
would be to enter there as we enter here. 

[331] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

We came not at once but in the original form of 
an invisible egg ; a small dot of unorganized and un- 
developed vital matter. It took many years for us to 
develop into a human maturity. 

May it not then be so on the other plane if we really 
continue? May we not there enter through the gate- 
way of an invisible or infinitesimal unit of radio-ac- 
tive, electro-magnetic or other matter, which must 
needs adapt itself to its new environment, and await 
development and unfoldment according to the con- 
ditions there existing? 

If this theory be true it would play havoc with 
some of the imagined conditions which are supposed 
to prevail in the Great Beyond. According to this 
theory we would not appear again on the other side 
as a mature personality as we left this plane, but we 
would begin with nothing but the implanted memory 
and hereditary qualities emanating from the life we 
have lived and left, and would grow up under wholly 
new and foreign surroundings. 

We would slowly pass through another form of 
life, and whether there would be any manifest mem- 
ory of the history of this life, or whether it would 
come back slowly to us by way of intimations and sug- 
gestions, much as dreams do at present, is, of course, 
a detail that would require investigation and dis- 
covery. 

Nevertheless, we have here a theory which would 
make plausible and logical the possibility of a future 
existence, without in the least violating a single prin- 
ciple or law of Nature with which we are at present 
acqua-^nted. 

[ 332 ] 



CHAPTER XXXIX 

Thus Science Answers 

THUS is the challenge of the War answered by 
the voice of Science. Barbarous, gruesome and 
appalling as is the havoc wrought — almost incalcul- 
able the loss of life — yet, viewed in the perspective 
of the Ages, it marks but a bloody hiatus in the vast 
path of progress trodden by the path of Man. A 
single life is but a temporary bubble on the ocean of 
existence, and sooner or later is burst by the passing 
wind of Fate. Multitudinous lives are but the mul- 
tiplication of the individual unit, and, too, pursue the 
same lethal destiny. All sooner or later must die 
and disappear from this planet. They go out, like 
the sudden snuffing of a candle, amid the gory gusts 
of battlefields; that they go in battalions, regiments, 
divisions, tumbling down the bloody steeps of death 
— this, indeed, is heart- wracking and appalling. Yet 
the fact of death is due in every life — whether ex- 
piring on the peaceful bed, nursed by Nature 's sooth- 
ing, or consumed with fires of fever, or slaughtered 
in tempest, holocast or cataclysm, or, alas, swept, en 
masse, into the hungry maw of devouring War; it is 
the same — a fate appointed to each of us, escape 
from which is impossible. 

However, History and Science here conspire to re- 
lieve us somewhat of the pain and despair the gloomy 
doom imposes. For History records that though 

[333] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

Death is absolute, tliough. decay and destruction are 
unavoidable, though civilizations must needs be buried 
beneath recurring avalanches of havoc and disaster, 
war and ruination; yet ever above the bloody debris 
rise once more the resplendent achievements of 
humanity, prophesying, in spite of ancient woe, the 
ever hoped for Brighter Day the human heart 
anticipates. Disaster and Death can never write 
Finis to the story of human life. It moves forever 
onward, and defies the Damocles sword of annihila- 
tion. Despite the most atrocious and inexcusable war 
that ever disgraced human history, despite the fact 
that all the arts and sciences, the knowledges, philoso- 
phies and religions of the earth were embroiled and 
utilized to excuse and carry on the diabolical ven- 
ture, yet above the gory horror we still discern a 
golden aureole that bespeaks a nobler age to follow. 
Today War was made the necessity for the swiftest 
inventions known to man in any epoch; balloons, 
dirigibles, Zeppelins, aeroplanes, auto-tanks, subma- 
rines of unimagined tonnage and caliber, armored 
ships of the most gigantic types; a host of newly in- 
vented chemical edibles, and varied industries un- 
thought of before the War; all this and much more 
has come to pass because of the insistant pressure of 
instant Necessity, created by conditions only such a 
mighty conflict could engender. But we know the 
War will end, and when ended we also know that 
these infinite and almost mythical inventions, now 
employed only for destructive ends, will be trans- 
ferred to peaceful utilization, and thereby increase 

[334] 



THUS SCIENCE ANSWERS 

the comfort, happiness and progress of man beyond 
the present power of the imagination to conceive. 

What a startling and blood-kindling sight, to wit- 
ness squadrons of air-ships, scores, hundreds, thou- 
sands of them, all piercing the skies together, flying 
defiantly against the sun and in the teeth of tempest 
or the glare of lightning, to inflict, alas, havoc and 
destruction on doomed victims beneath ! Yet who can- 
not easily conceive that, once the War is over, all 
these Gargantuan monsters of Death and woe shall 
be converted to the uses and happiness of mankind? 

We think no more of air-passages as impossible and 
Utopian; we now know they are actual; and in the 
near future air-trains will travel over the continent 
and across the ocean, as now trains on land and ships 
on water carry the freightage of traffic and human 
lives. Every invention, hastily conceived or created 
during these times of misery, will become instrumen- 
talities of human advancement and development. 
Even the now curseful submarine, made so disgrace- 
ful in the eyes of man because of the Teutonic per- 
version to which it has been put, will emerge from 
the War, no doubt, one of man's most benignant 
friends. For is it not possible that the invention will 
be carried forward to such high degree of improve- 
ment that the under-sea passage may become more 
popular, on account of its freedom from surface 
storms and tempests, and perhaps a more speedy pas- 
sage than the upper waves will permit? Then, too, 
may not some genius soon develop the idea so far that 
ocean vessels will be contrived in such manner as to 
combine the efficiency of both surface and submersible 

[ 335 ] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

vessels, whereby the voyage may be enjoyed upon the 
surface in calm weather, and, when the tempest 
threatens, may sink to calmer depths, where un- 
hindered the passage may be pursued? 

One can easily foresee how Science is prepared to 
advance the interests of mankind a thousand fold 
because of the impetus given his inventive and cre- 
ative powers by the bloody spur of War. 

Thus from the historical point of view, we are per- 
mitted to forecast a future of progress and unimagined 
prosperity for mankind. 

But if the theory advanced in this treatise shall in 
time be proved to be correct ; if we have not misread 
the possibilities and intimations of Nature, as we 
have discerned her laws and elements that play so 
mysterious a role in the vast drama of existence, then 
Science is ready to enhance the encouragement af- 
forded by the retrospect and prophesy of History. 

For, as we must all sometime enter the mist-en- 
folded realms of Valhalla, we are granted, by this or 
some similar theory, to realize how Nature has pro- 
vided some form of continuity of the present phase 
of existence, whether in the persistence of immediate 
consciousness, or of an initial consciousness to be un- 
folded in that after sphere, as our present conscious- 
ness was here unfolded from initial impersonality. 
Science seems to intimate that Nature has not wasted 
the forces which she has aggregated for millenniums 
to generate the individuality each human being re- 
cognizes as himself ; but that just as she releases from 
the heart of the Atom, which she achieved only after 
countless millions of ages, the secret forces that con- 

[336] 



THUS SCIENCE ANSWERS 

stitute the phenomenal world which we observe; so 
she may release from the cumulative forces which she 
utilized to generate a human soul, or individual, the 
indestructible energy that will continue to perform 
on some invisible stage the chief role of being in a 
drama yet unrevealed. 

It is impossible to conceive of annihilation; we 
find it nowhere in Nature; why then, only, in the 
realm of human consciousness should Nature permit 
it? 

Nature is replete with what we call death; but we 
know that it is but a phase of transition. The heavens 
are strewn with spectral corpses of dead stars; con- 
stellations have dissolved; worlds have disappeared. 
But all this fiery cataclysm has been but introductory 
to resuscitations that again caused the heavens to 
swarm with resurrected worlds and stars. 

The cycle of life and death, death and life, is every- 
where. The infinite Rhythm of Nature is recorded 
in this recurring cycle. Nowhere is Finality written ; 
nowhere is the dust of stars so scattered that re- 
organization is impossible. The primal Ether is 
itself instinct with life, and all matter is alive. 

This is the Voice of Science, that seems almost 
strident in our day. It vibrates with hope; it glows 
with prophecy. THERE IS NO DEATH! 

Our error has been in our too anxious thought that 
all life is as we know it; and what life there may yet 
be for us, must be as immanent and palpable as the 
life we now possess. 

Of this Science seems not yet assured by Nature. 
Life, the principle ; life, the urge ; life, the indestruc- 

[337] 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR 

tible essential; this Life Nature reveals and assures 
us of. 

But the form of life; the instant manifestation; 
the incarnate individualization; of this Nature does 
not assure a perpetuity or continuity. Of the life- 
energy — yes! But of the life-personality — she 
speaks not yet assuredly of that. 

And yet of the Consciousness, as the climax of the 
individuality, she speaks with intimating promise. 

But Consciousness is a form, realized consecutively 
in gradations of development, dependent on the 
instrumentality through which it articulates. The 
present consciousness of the individual is the product 
of the play of the life-energy on the quality of matter 
that composes nerve and tissue and cell and brain 
in the present form of man. With other matter the 
form of consciousness would be different. 

Ah, here enters the voice and cheer of Science; 
for she begins to intimate, as set forth in this treatise, 
that there is an element now existing in the human 
organism, which is not wholly dependable for its 
existence on the gross particles that constitute this 
form of flesh ; that that element is native to a plane of 
invisible substance of which in our present bodies 
we have vague intimations, but whose powers and 
possibilities we cannot penetrate ; that when the gross 
coil of flesh is shuffled off this rare and sublimate 
element or substance is released, as the flying electron, 
when the atom explodes, is released to disport its 
powers in realms invisible to the eye of man. 

The psychic powers, the thoughts and mental 
energy, which found in this element the substance 

[338] 



THUS SCIENCE ANSWERS 

through which they could articulate, fly off with the 
flying electrons; electrons charged with the impress 
of the individual consciousness; into that invisible 
realm of matter we make our exit when the gates that 
lead to life on earth are closed and the gates of a 
spectral world gape wide. 

Such seems to be the intimation of Science, the 
Answer which forsooth she would give to gory Mars, 
who gloats on his myriad graves, his blood soaked 
trenches, his havoc echoing with shrieks of hell, his 
countless homes pierced with the blood-smeared spears 
of death. 

Nature Answers: 

THERE IS NO DEATH. I AM INCARNATE 
LIFE. WHAT DIES DISSOLVES TO LIVE 
AGAIN SOMEWHERE, SOMEHOW. DEATH IS 
AN APPARITION. LIFE IS THE ONLY 
REALITY!! 



FINIS 



[339] 



Appendices 



Appendix A 

(Referred to on page xxi) 

COMMENT 

Mr. Carrington I think rather misses the point I 
undertook to emphasize. It was hardly my intention 
to assert that the form of matter known as radio- 
active energy was itself the actual thought or, as he 
calls it, the noumenon, but I rather undertook to 
suggest or perhaps to contend, that the energy of the 
radio-active plane of matter, and what we know as 
thought or mental energy, were one and the same in 
essence, their differentiation existing alone in their 
diverse expression. 

It is true, as he says, that all the forces of Nature 
are hlind, meaning thereby that they are not out- 
wardly directed by any pre-existing intelligence ; but, 
on the contrary, we find, as I have shown in the body 
of the work, that scientific investigators are driven to 
the conclusion that purpose is everywhere manifest 
in Nature from the lowest and simplest forms of 
inorganic and organic matter to the highest and most 
complex. 

If that be true, then naturally it must follow that 
some phase of thought or intelligence is inherent in 
every form of energy and matter. 

My contention is, therefore, that the ultimate essence 
of all matter — the plane where the electrons exist and 
function — is the phase of matter most amenable or 
susceptible to the impulse of the thought energy, and 
that the radio-active plane of matter is therefore the 
element in the nervous organism where the thought 
activity prevails. The radiant matter is itself of 
course, not thought and consciousness, — but it is the 
form of energy, or substance if you like, instinct with 
mental action. 

[343] 



APPENDICES 

The noumenon is not a thing apart, existing in the 
nowhere, — untenanted and unclothed, — but it is the 
mental phase of the radio-active energy when it is 
evolved in the histor^^ of organic life. 

In this sense I feel myself to be rather a monist than 
a dualist — for, it seems to me, the illogical deduction 
of dualism is that it postulates the existence of spirit, 
or mind, or noumenon, in a vacuum — finding no habi- 
tation for it. 

To me it is impossible to conceive of any function 
or action, any feeling or mentation, which can operate 
void of a physical agency — but if it exists apart and 
separate from the agency — (insomuch as matter in 
some form fills all space) then it must exist in a 
non-spacial plane — which is inconceivable. 

Either the noumenon is inherent in the substance, 
existing as a function or expression of it, and there- 
fore essentially inseparable, or it exists apart from it, 
super-imposed upon it. 

If it is inherent in the substance then the noumenon 
becomes a manifestation of it, and is differentiated 
from it in its functional characteristic only. But if 
it exists apart from substance then where is it; for 
is not substance everywhere? 

I think the confusion between dualism and monism 
arises from the fact that we realize that we possess 
a thought-apparatus (the brain and ner^^ous system), 
but we seem to do our thinking void of such an 
apparatus. 

We are whoUy unconscious of our brain and nervous 
system in the process of thinking — therefore it seems 
to us our mentation takes place in a plane above or 
beyond it. Yet when we reason it out we see, as we 
do our thinking through the apparatus of the brain 
and nervous system, that there must be what we might 
call a thinking element, or thinking substance, in the 
brain. 

Therefore I contend that it is this very refined and 

[344J 



APPENDICES 

sublimate phase of matter (really immaterial matter) 
the radio-active plane, where the thinking takes place, 
and the radiant substance itself functions in the 
process of thought-activity and consciousness. 

Energy apart from matter, or energy in a vacuum, 
seems unknown in Nature. Therefore consciousness, 
which is a form of energy, must function in and 
through some phase of matter. It cannot exist out- 
side of matter (for matter in its primary nature is 
everywhere). 

Hence matter and consciousness must be one and 
the same in primary essence, but vary vastly in func- 
tion and manifestation. 

This is true, however, only when we conceive of 
matter as ultimately a phase of energy — and, as con- 
sciousness itself is also a form of energy, matter and 
consciousness are one and the same in this sense only. 

Of course, as already intimated in the body of the 
work, and more fully elaborated by me in my other 
books, when we reduce matter to the plane of energy, 
we really must think of it as spirit — ^which in the old 
theological metaphysics connoted a plane of existence 
entraneous to matter, but in the new scientific meta- 
physics connotes the coalescence of energy and mat- 
ter — or primary substance omnipresent, omnipotent, 
omni-morphogenetic — ^that is the universal, absolute 
Pleroma. 

When Nature is thus analyzed it seems to me it 
compels and corroborates the philosophy of Monism. 

THE AUTHOR. 

Appendix B 

(Referred to on page 32) 

Fortunately there has just come to hand while I 
am writing these pages an English publication, ''Psy- 
chical and Supernormal Phenomena," by Dr. Paul 

[345] 



APPENDICES 

Joire (William Rider & Sons, London), in which I 
find further confirmation of thought photographs. 

Dr. Joire says: 

"In France, a man whose rectitude can be doubted 
by none, Commandant Darget, states that he has ob- 
tained some, which we reproduce in order to convey 
some idea to those who have no knowledge of them. 

The following is the manner in which the author 
himself says he obtained them: — 

There are first of all two photographs representing 
a bottle. 

'They were taken, like that of the cane,' writes 
Commandant Darget, 'gelatine side downwards, the 
fingers touching the plate on the glass side, in order 
to project the fluid and the thought constructing the 
fluid, putting it in place, so to speak, and making the 
Mens agita modem; to effect this a strong exertion 
of will-power was needed. M. A., through whose medi- 
umship one of the photographs was obtained, told me 
that he did not wish to try again because of the head- 
ache from which he suffered after these experiments.' 

The following is Commandant Darget 's own ac- 
count of the manner in which he obtained the photo- 
graphs of the bottle. 

'On May 27, 1896, M. A. showed me in L 'Illustra- 
tion of May 23rd, a finger with some fluidie flames 
obtained by Dr. Le Bon in the developing bath when 
touching the gelatine. He invited me that very even- 
ing to try the same experiment. I did so, and ob- 
tained a large radiation around my five fingers. 

'Then M. A. said to me that if one could represent 
an object, the phenomenon would become remark- 
able. Here I must enter into some details. 

'M. A. had just poured me out a glass of old brandy ; 
I had kept the bottle before my eyes for half an hour. 
I had expressed my intention of tasting it again, say- 
ing jokingly, that this would give me more fluid. Then 
I put a plate in the bath, which I touched on the 

[346] 



APPENDICES 

glass side and not on the gelatine side. I thought first 
of all of a table ; my thought glided on to the image of 
a chair, which also vanished, giving place to the image 
of the bottle from which I had drunk. It must be ob- 
served that I had a similar bottle containing the devel- 
oper before my eyes and I saw it, by means of the 
red light, in the dark room. 

'The picture which came on the plate when devel- 
oped is shown herewith. It is certain that the outline 
of a bottle can be distinguished ; it is so clear that it 
cannot be attributed to a shadow or to a chance 
fogging. 

'M. A., having pointed out that in order to thor- 
oughly prove the reality of this phenomenon, it would 
be necessary to obtain a second bottle, we agreed 
to try. 

'He did not omit to make me drink of the same old 
brandy ; for my part, I looked for a long time at the 
bottle. 

'Having gone into the dark room, I tried the same 
process as in the preceding experiment, placing my 
fingers on the glass side of the plate in the bath. When 
the plate was fixed and washed we looked for the pic- 
ture of the bottle and found it.' 

Commandant Darget also obtained some very 
curious photographs, amongst others that of a walk- 
ing-stick. 

This is what he says himself : — 

'The photographs of the walking-stick were ob- 
tained at Vouziers eleven years ago. It was a stick 
with a handle which I generally used. I had put it 
on my desk where I made my photographs that even- 
ing, after closing the windows and taking out my red 
lantern. 

'With regard to the eagle, it was produced in this 
way. Mme. Darget was in my office, lying on my 
sofa, about ten o'clock in the evening. I said to her: 
'I am gonig to put out the lamp and try (as I have 

[347] 



APPENDICES 

already done sometimes) to take a fluid print over 
my forehead. I will hand you a plate for you to do 
it as well.' 

'I therefore handed her a plate, which she held 
with both her hands about an inch in front of her 
forehead. A short time afterwards, it might be about 
ten minutes, she said to me: *I think I have been 
asleep ; I am very tired, I am going to lie down. * And, 
feeling her way in the darkness, she handed me the 
plate. 

^ I then went to develop it, and was surprised to see 
this astonishing figure of an eagle. I have called it 
'a dream-photograph,' although my wife does not re- 
member having dreamed of a bird or anything else 
while she held the plate. 



Appendix C 

{Referred to on page 38) 

''A single cell, out of the millions of diversity 
differentiated cells, which compose the body, becomes 
specialized as a sexual cell; it is thrown off from the 
organism and is capable of reproducing all the pecu- 
liarities of the parent body, in the new individual 
which springs from it by cell-division and the com- 
plex process of differentiation. . . . How is it that a 
single cell of the body can contain within itself all 
the hereditary tendencies of the whole organism? . . . 
The germ cells are not divided at all, but they are 
derived directly from the parent germ-cell. ... I 
propose to call this the theory of ^'The Continuity of 
the Germ-Plasm," for it is founded upon the idea 
that heredity is brought about by the transference 
from one generation to another of a substance with 
a definite chemical, and above all, molecular, constitu- 
tion. I have called this substance the ''germ-plasm." 
... I have attempted to explain heredity by sup- 
posing that in each ontogeny a part of the specific 

[348] 



APPENDICES 

germ-plasm contained in the parent egg-cell is not 
used up in the construction of the body of the off- 
spring, but is reserved unchanged for the formation 
of the germ-cells of the following generation." 

From the Introduction to ''The Continuity of 
the Germ-Plasm as the Foundation of a Theory of 
Heredity, ' ' by August Weismann. 

Appendix D 

{Referred to on page 90) 

A writer in the Bevue Scientifique (Paris, June 2-9) 
tells of interesting experiments by an American and 
by a Russian scientist tending to prove the ^'poten- 
tial immortality" of Infusoria. Both made observa- 
tions covering several years, both used the same 
media, and both reached the same results. We read : 

' ' The experiments of the American biologist. Wood- 
ruff, are particularly striking. He made cultures of 
Infusoria for seven years, from 1907 to 1914, and ob- 
tained more than 4,500 generations by successive divi- 
sion, with no intervention of conjugation. The In- 
fusoria thus possessed a sort of 'potential immortality' 
and might have reproduced themselves indefinitely 
by this asexual method. The interest of the question 
from the point of view of biologic philosophy is quite 
evident. Later, a well-known Russian biologist, Metal- 
nikoff, began a long series of experiments, whose re- 
sults he has just announced. 

"The nutritive medium employed by both Metalni- 
koff and Woodruff was an infusion of hay or a weak 
solution of beef extract ; starting with an isolated or- 
ganism, he obtained twenty Infusoria, which were the 
starting-points of twenty independent cultures. Each 
was bred alone on an empty slide. Every day the 
nutritive medium was renewed, the number of divi- 

[349] 



APPENDICES 

sions of the Infusoria was noted, and, to prevent con- 
jugation, only a single organism was then left in each 
culture. At present the cultures have been going on 
for eight years, tho the number of generations is not 
so high as in Woodruff's experiments, which may be 
explained by difference in climatic conditions, or per- 
haps by racial peculiarities of the organisms. Metal- 
nikoff has drawn curves of the speed of reproduction 
of his Infusoria. He notes particularly that in the 
early years the number of generations obtained de- 
creased yearly, being 413 in 1912, 397 in 1913, 393 
in 1914, and 258 in 1915. It might be thought that 
this was due to progressive decrease in the energy of 
reproduction; but since the beginning of 1916 the 
speed has again increased, and at the end of that year 
it had reached a higher point than at the outset — 490 
generations. Metalnikoff's results have thus con- 
firmed Woodruff's. But one may imagine what prod- 
igies of patience will be necessary to carry experi- 
ments of such a nature to a successful termination." 
{The Literary Digest for July 28, 1917.) 

Again, a writer in the Bevue Scientifique (Paris, 
Nov. 30, 1917), quoted in Literary Digest, says: 

^'Authors who have studied the biology of Infusoria 
have proved that they always reproduce by partition, 
but that after a certain number of successive divisions 
there necessarily intervenes a conjugation. ... If 
for one reason or another the conjugation is prevented, 
the Infusoria . . . begins to present phenomena of 
age and of degeneration, . . . and finally they die. 

. . . The recent experiments of Lorande L. Wood- 
ruff tend to prove that all Infusoria may divide in- 
definitely without conjugation to rejuvenate the race. 

. . . Woodruff's investigation thus showed . . . that 
a one-celled organism may reproduce indefinitely with- 
out intervention of conjugation. Neither old age nor 
the necessity for fecundation are inherent in living 
matter,*' (Italic type by the Author.) 
[ 350 ] 



APPENDICES 

Appendix £ 

{Referred to on page 271) 

Here is a book of genuine merit and worthy of 
study by those who are seriously interested in occult 
matters. Many of the books which have been written 
on this theme have demanded too much faith and 
trust on the part of the reader to reassure his con- 
fidence in the subject matter of the treatises. But in 
this work Dr. Crawford approaches the subject 
strictly as a scientist and his conclusions, while they 
will of course not be accepted by all physicists, are 
nevertheless most interesting and suggestive. He ex- 
perimented with an unusually sensitive medium, 
through a period of extended duration, recording in 
this book eighty-seven experiments through her that 
are of so different a type than what one usually meets 
in psychic research that they cannot be ignored. Pre- 
ceding him, no other scientist whom I know of, save 
Sir William Crookes, ever approached the subject 
from the same angle and undertook similar tests. 
But Crookes' efforts were of a more limited nature 
than those of Dr. Crawford's. The latter being a 
mechanical engineer and lecturer in a University, 
was able to invent and utilize most sensitive instru- 
ments by which to detect the presence of a strange 
force that apparently emanated from the body of the 
medium. By scales which he invented he was able 
to determine the actual amount of the energy that 
entered into or departed from her body, determined 
by the varying weight of her body as the force came 
and went. The book is illustrated with many plates 
indicating the instruments invented and used in mak- 
ing the tests, thereby enabling the reader to under- 
stand the scientific method employed. One of the 
most interesting features of the work is the deduction 
of what Dr. Crawford calls "the cantilever theory." 
This embodies his scientific hypothesis explanatory of 
the phenomena. He believes that there passes from 

[351] 



APPENDICES 

the medium during trance states and when under 
influence of what he calls ''the operators," a sort of 
bar or rod (invisible of course) which tends to curve 
upward at the end and spread out as if it had fingers 
and could grasp objects which it contacts. His theory 
is that by this rod, which the "operators" cause to 
come out of the medium's body the acts of levitation 
are performed and the many physical, phenomena 
which he sets forth. 

But strange to say, though he has hit on as plausi- 
ble and purely semi-mechanical theory, he supple- 
ments, and some may think discounts it by declaring 
his further belief that all these phenomena are per- 
formed by the intervention of excarnate spirits, whose 
identity he believes can be discovered. 

This is to me the disappointing feature of this very 
able work. For until we know all the capabilities 
and resources of the sub-conscious mental energy in 
the human organism, we are scarcely justified it 
occurs to me, to postulate the intervention of super- 
planetary agencies. It appeals to me as a possibility 
that the very energy which he insists must pass from 
the medium's body in the shape of a rod or bar (and 
his reasons for this phase appear to us as plausible) 
is of just the type and quality that could be operated 
by the subliminal forces of the human mind. Speak- 
ing of the nature of the energy which functions he 
himself says, "Now what kind of potential energy is 
it? Is it chemical, pressure, electrical, heat energy, 
or some form quite unknown to us ? Personally — and 
now the reader must remember I am again in the 
region of hypothesis, though of hypothesis derived 
from a considerable amount of observation — I am in- 
clined to think it is a form of chemical energy asso- 
ciated with the human nervous system. ... At any 
rate I think there can be little doubt that this psychic 
energy is associated with particles of matter." 

Having said this it surprised me that the author 

[352] 



APPENDICES 

should look beyond the plane of invisible ** imma- 
terial" matter to find an explanatory source of his 
phenomena. For in my own work "Psychic Phe- 
nomena, Science and Immortality," I have attempted 
to show that there does exist in the human organism 
this very energy composed of the minutest particles 
of matter known in nature, and that these particles 
escape from the life-cell (whether in the central- 
nervous, sympathetic or cranial region) . 

I there said, '^A faint glimpse is already given us 
of a discovery which yet promises to divulge this deep 
laid secret. The very latest intimations of physical 
science would seem to indicate that there exists within 
the interior of the chemical atom, deeper down even 
than the electrical corpuscle of which it is composed, 
a secret force, now called the intra-atomic force, that 
may yet clear up many of the mysteries of chemical 
action as well as the origin and process of living 
matter. ' ' 

And this is the force that too may unlock the mys- 
tery of so-called occult phenomena. 

The work of Dr. Crawford, though disappointing 
in this detail, will have to be reckoned with by that 
great class of antagonistic scientific philosophers who 
refuse even to undertake a study of the occult. Per- 
sonally I stiU cling to the belief that these manifesta- 
tions are the expressions of energy already resident 
in the human organism, in its present stage of evolu- 
tion, and that a few more investigators like Dr. Craw- 
ford will dig still deeper and discern the operations 
and laws of this energy. 

The spiritistic hypothesis is naturally the most 
popular and desirable, as it affords consolation to 
those who wish to feel assured of an after life. Never- 
theless no such assurance should be sought for save 
what Nature herself evinces and until we have in- 
dubitable demonstrations of the spirits or personal 
** operators, " we should patiently pursue our investi- 

[353] 



APPENDICES 

gations and accept as a working hypothesis that that 
calls for the least faith and distortion of our reason. 

(''The Reality of Psychic Phenomena" by W. J. 
Crawford, D. Sc— E. P. Dutton & Co., New York. 
Price $2.00.) 

Appendix P 
{Referred to on page 301) 

Says Mr. Soddy, in Nature (London, March 3, 
1904): "According to recent views stimulated by 
investigation of the newly discovered radio-active 
substances, what we call chemical elements, are merely 
residues left after ages of disintegration similar to 
what radium and similar bodies are now undergoing. 
... As the process of disintegration continues, certain 
stages are reached in which the substances produced 
are of the nature of chemical elements, though dif- 
fering from the ordinary conception of an element, 
in that their existence is merely temporary. . . . The 
atoms of ordinary chemistry represent the forms with 
longest life, and they exist today because they have 
survived a process." 

Appendix G 

Sententious Resume of Theses Consecutively 

Argued and Elaborated in the 

Body of this Book 

Summary op Scientific Facts That Tentatively 

Support the Hypothesis of the Possibility op 

Life After Death 

PROPOSITION I 
Vitalism, or the principle of life, seems to be a 
phase of natural energy, co-ordinated and correlated 
v^ith other natural energies, but possessed of prop- 
erties wholly different from any of the others. 

[354] 



APPENDICES 

PEOPOSITION II 

Vitalism has a transmorphogenetic property; that 
is, it can transform inert, lifeless matter into living 
material. It is the only energy in Nature known to 
possess this property. 

PROPOSITION III 

Though Vitalism is correlated with aU the other 
natural energies it accomplishes marvels impossible 
to them because it creates its own material through 
which to function. 

PROPOSITION IV 

Vitalism has the power of constructing, out of the 
material which it has created or generated from inert 
matter, an infinity of cells whose complex association 
constitutes a living organism. 

PROPOSITION V 
Groups of such ceUs are set apart for specific work 
in organic bodies, chief of which are the cells utilized 
in the nervous system. 

PROPOSITION VI 

A gradational system of nervous apparatus develops 
in all organic bodies co-ordinately with the develop- 
ment of psychic powers, which can be traced from the 
undifferentiated homogeneous body of the amoeba, 
through vertebrates and mammals to the central ner- 
vous system in Man. 

PROPOSITION VII 

The Central System in Man is the only instrumen- 
tality of Self-Consciousness, and constitutes the line 
of demarkation between the lower animal world and 
the Kingdom of Man. 

[355] 



APPENDICES 

PROPOSITION VIII 

That is, commensurately with the development of 
the unfolding powers of the soul, or the psychic ca- 
pacities, from that of mere reflex response to stimula- 
tion, as in the lowest forms of life, to those of percep- 
tion, memor}^ and reflection in man, there is a gradual 
development of nervous apparatus from the diffuse 
vital substance of one-celled animals to the ganglionic 
systems of inferior animals and finally to the central 
system and the brain in Man. 

PROPOSITION IX 

Likewise in the Elingdom of Man there is also a 
marked gradual development and perfection of the 
nervous systems as the psychic powers ascend from 
mere reflex sensations of infancy to the higher powers 
of maturity. 

PROPOSITION X 

Self-consciousness in Man is not coincident with 
birth, but occurs only when the nervous system is suf- 
ficiently completed to permit its expression. Usually 
this occurs after the first or second year of infancy. 

PROPOSITION XI 

As the capacity of self -consciousness increases there 
develop in the human brain certain specific centres 
or organs of thought, by means of which Man accom- 
plishes his intellectual achievements. These centres 
are entirely wanting in the infant and the lower 
animals. 

PROPOSITION XII 
Thus far we have learned that the nervous devel- 
opment of Man, because of the properties of Vitalism, 
is continuous, progressive and still proceeding, for 
there is a constant unfoldment of finer and more in- 
volved convolutions in the human brain as Man be- 
comes more thoughtful and intelligent. 

[356] 



APPENDICES 

PROPOSITION XIII 

Apparently the Yitalistie property is such that it 
determines and develops the character of the appara- 
tus it operates in the various. stages of organic growth 
throughout the animal and human kingdoms. 

PROPOSITION XIV 
But in the lower Kingdoms the development has 
ceased and the apparatus take on no new features; 
whereas in the Kingdom of Man they do. The ner- 
vous instrument of the psychic faculties in the lower 
kingdoms is static and finished ; in Man it is dynamic 
and progressive. 

PROPOSITION XV 
The substance in which the energy of Vitalism man- 
ifests its properties is called Protoplasm. This is the 
physical basis of life. 

PROPOSITION XVI 
Protoplasm J while primarily a homogeneous and 
undifferentiated substance, operates apparently on 
three distinctive planes : First, there is the visible, 
vital substance of an organic body; second, there is 
the plane of the invisible, microscopical, structureless, 
semi-fluid, substance, sometimes called "bioplasm," 
which creates the cells and tissues of the body and 
determines the kind of plant or animal that shall 
finally evolve from the homogeneous mass ; and third, 
there is the plane of the ultra-microscopical, hypo- 
thetical, ulterior substance, which is logically sug- 
gested by the nature and conditions of the vital 
activities. 

PROPOSITION XVII 

Now, pure protoplasm is accompanied by two dis- 
tinguishing phenomena; they are the properties of 
colloidal matter and phosphorescence. CoUoidals 

[357] 



APPENDICES 

have the property of causing chemical reactions in 
other substances without at all affecting any changes 
in themselves. Phosphorescence is a spontaneous 
luminous condition generated without heat. 

PROPOSITION XVIII 

The colloidal property and phosphorescence are 
conditions caused by what is known as radio-activity, 
or the explosion and dissolution of the atom, resulting 
in a flow of electrons, or negative charges of elec- 
tricity. 

PROPOSITION XIX 

The fact, then, that protoplasm is possessed of col- 
loidal and phosphorescent properties indicates that 
it must be accompanied by radio-active energy, or 
impacted by streams of flying electrons. 

PROPOSITION XX 

This fact further postulates the possibility that 
vital activities origin^ate in an electro-magnetic plane 
of forces, and that thought, or the force generated in 
the cell called thought or consciousness is electrical 
in nature. 

PROPOSITION XXI 

If radio-activity is a condition of the vital substance, 
protoplasm, as indicated by the state of colloidal 
power and of phosphorescence, then the energy of 
thought, being electrical, would probably also be 
radio-active, and playing upon the brain cells would 
generate a plane of electro-magnetism as the field of 
consciousness. 

PROPOSITION XXII 

The mental or the psychic powers (that is, the 
^^soul") therefore hypothetically operate in an elec- 
tro-magnetic plane whose potential phenomena are 
outside the normal functions of man, and occur spor- 

[358] 



APPENDICES 

adically or by induction through mediums, or pecu- 
liar nervous organisms, causing confusion and mis- 
interpretation. 

PROPOSITION XXIII 

The possibility of the soul or psychic organism 
continuing after the dissolution of the gross body will 
depend on the nature and durability of the element 
in which the psychic organism functions. 

PROPOSITION XXIV 
We have seen that the element or substance is ap- 
parently the fundamental element of protoplasm, 
namely radiant matter, which consists of an infinite 
flow of electrical units discharged from the dissolving 
atoms of the life units. 

PROPOSITION XXV 

Now, as thought and consciousness seem tc function 
in this substance and as Nature knows no vacuum, if 
they continue to function after death it must be 
through an instrumentality that is capable of contin- 
uing its existence after the body from which it evolved 
has ceased. 

PROPOSITION XXVI 

But, as all forms of visible and gross matter dis- 
solve in death, the only form of matter that might 
continue on is the invisible, radio-active substance, or 
the streams of electrical charge from the disappearing 
and dissolving atoms. 

PROPOSITION XXVII 
The escaping electrical units, or electrons, in which 
consciousness functioned cannot return to other ma- 
terial atoms to form new gross matter on this planet, 
but go on somewhere forever, or are annihilated. 

[359] 



APPENDICES 

PROPOSITION XXVIII 

They cannot be annihilated for there is no reduction 
of something to nothing in Nature. They must there- 
fore go on somewhere. Where do they go? 

PROPOSITION XXIX 
Either they continue in the association which they 
maintained while in the living body, or they form new 
associations in another sphere. 

PROPOSITION XXX 

The possibility of their holding together as psychic 
elements of a continued personality would depend on 
the connecting medium of memory and the intensifi- 
cation of the self-consciousness. 

PROPOSITION XXXI 
That thoughts or psychic elements seem to be ca- 
pable of sustaining themselves outside the brain in 
which they are generated is intimated by the tenta- 
tive success of thought-photography. If thoughts can 
be photographed then they must be held in some sort 
of mould or element which the camera seizes. 

PROPOSITION XXXII 
The mould in which they persist must be constituted 
of the electrical units or electrons that make ' ' radiant 
matter," or radio-active substance. 

PROPOSITION XXXIII 
Impalpable aura or a flow of electrons around ordi- 
nary gross matter, though utterly invisible and ultra- 
miscroscopical, can be photographed. Their existence 
though temporar}^ is sufficiently long for the taking 
of a good distinct photograph. 

PROPOSITION XXXIV 
Considering that gross or inert matter has but a very 
initial memory and consciousness, scarcely susceptible 
or detectible, and yet that the electric figures which 

[360] 



APPENDICES 

invisibly organize around the surface of the gross 
matter are of sufficient endurance to be photographed, 
it must follow that thought-forms, susceptible to 
photography, are capable of much longer duration 
because of the highly-developed memory and con- 
sciousness which characterize their origin in the 
human brain. 

PROPOSITION XXXV 
The continuity of individual thought-forms in the 
electrical element, then, will be commensurate with 
the degree of memory and self -consciousness that per- 
vades them. And the organization of infinite thought- 
forms, that have flitted from individual brains and 
continue on after the brain 's decease, would depend on 
the integrity of the personal consciousness or memory 
of the individual. 

PROPOSITION XXXVI 

As in the planetary body of a human being higher 
and more complex nervous and cranial apparatus are 
developed by the energy of thought and consciousness, 
together with the integrating force of memory, it fol- 
lows that given the continuity of consciousness and 
memory, in an element that supercedes the body's de- 
cease, such consciousness and memory will aggregate 
and organize the units of the new element in which 
they subsist to their use and necessity. 

PROPOSITION XXXVII 

The continuity of future existence will then depend 
on the durability of the substantial element, in the 
new plane of existence, and the intensity of the self- 
consciousness and personal memory of the deceased. 

PROPOSITION XXXVIII 

First, as to the potential durability of the electrical 
element in the next plane of existence. This element 

[361] 



APPENDICES 

is, by hypothesis, radio-active, or constituted of an 
infinity of free electrical units. These electrical units 
or electrons are themselves susceptible of temporary 
continuity within limited period; but they also emit 
certain emanations which are themselves both sus- 
ceptible of longer duration than the element from 
which they emanate, and are capable of transmuting 
other elements by induction into states of matter of 
potentially infinite duration. 

PEOPOSITION XXXIX 

Within this element then we find hypothetically a 
natural medium in which human consciousness and 
memory may persist, and a medium which by trans- 
mutation and induction is susceptible of infinite or 
perpetual continuity. 

PROPOSITION XL 

We have then discovered in Nature an invisible ele- 
ment or substance which furnishes all the essential 
requisities for the material or substantial continuity 
of thought-energy or conscious, personal existence. 

PROPOSITION XLI 
We have also found the elements of human person- 
ality, namely, the thought-units, and the conscious- 
ness that is centred in a personal memory, which is 
susceptible of ever-increasing development, as dem- 
onstrated in the planetary lives of human beings. 

PROPOSITION XLII 
But, human consciousness and memory are poten- 
tially decadent in the planetary organism, therefore 
senility seems to be prophetic of permanent decay 
and death. This is true of planetary gross matter; 
but the element in which thought functions, being free 
electricity, if released from the limitations and poten- 

[ 362 ] 



APPENDICES 

tial decadence of gross matter, might afford an elastic 

element susceptible of ever more and more complex 
organization resulting from the control of increas- 
ingly intensified self -consciousness. 

PROPOSITION XLIII 

Given a free plastic electrical element as the sus- 
ceptible medium of self-consciousness, capable of 
duration, though invisible, and of transmutation into 
other forms of matter (through emanation and in- 
duction) which have perpetual durability; given a 
self-centred and intensifying self-consciousness sus- 
tained by the integrating energy of memory activa- 
ting and functioning through this electrical medium, 
and you have the essential requisites in Nature of the 
persistent continuity of personal consciousness, pro- 
vided such elements or requisites already potentially 
exist in the human body and become the residue of 
its decease. 

By hypothesis these elements do exist in the human 
body, subject to the natural laws indicated, and there- 
fore hypothetically afford the natural basis or charac- 
teristics necessary for the continuity of conscious 
personal existence after death. However, 

PROPOSITION XLIV 

It is not necessary to assume the future existence of 
a full developed personality or organism, on the ad- 
vent of the residue of this life into that on another 
plane. We need but assume a qualified element or 
substance, in which inhere the integrating tendency 
of consciousness and memory, the basis of personality, 
as the substantial foundation of such an existence. 
The unit in which this residue of the present life may 
inhere may be infinitesimal. This is certified to by the 
analogy of organic life on this plane, in which all 
forms of life begin in a mere microscopical, infinitesi- 

[ 363 ] 



APPENDICES 

mal speck of protoplasm, out of which evolve all the 
multifarious forms and organisms that constitute the 
living world of this planet/ 

*• Recent scientific investigation seems to be conclusive that spon- 
taneous generation on this planet is a myth. 

But it also points to the probable fact in Nature that life was not 
created in the sense we understand, but that life is an eternal 
and constant state or condition of the universe which has trans- 
migrated between stars and worlds. 

On this point probably Arrhenius has been the most popular ex- 
pounder as well as original investigator and philosopher. He 
says: "Life itself is eternal like matter and energy." 

Arrhenius introduced another idea which bears directly on our thesis. 
He conceived that matter in ulterior forms of infinitesimal 
spheroids was conveyed between stars and worlds by the pressure 
of light rays, or by radiation. This principle seems to be 
demonstrated as a fact in Nature. If this is so then he pro- 
ceeds to show that life itself by this pressure might have been 
conveyed between worlds. (See Arrhenius's "The Life of the 
Universe." Harper's Living Lib., pp. 250-251.) 

He insists that life was wafted to this planet from some other by the 
means of radiation or light pressure. By this hypothesis there 
would exist what might be called life-germs or primordial life 
units which are wafted to this planet to be revealed in manifold 
biological transformations. 

Now couple this hypothesis with that expressed in this treatise, 
namely, that thoughts are forms of radiant energy or matter, 
that reside in and emanate, or are emitted, from the human 
brain, then by the force of light pressure these thought-forms 
might not only travel between mutual brains, but be wafted 
through the invisible ether to other spheres to begin again an- 
other form of evolutional expression. This psychic unit would 
not only be the complement of the life in eternal persistence 
. (containing the concentrated consciousness of the expired in- 
dividual) but would possess the potency (by reason of instinctive 
memory) of reconstructing a new personal life founded on the 
evolution and inertia of the form of life which has ceased 
to appear on earth. 

The error into which we have probably permitted ourselves to be 
led by past traditions, on contemplating the nature of future 
existence, is, that if life continues on, it must be the continua- 
tion of the full-developed and perfected form of life manifested 
on this plane. On this theory the "I" or Ego must depart this 
planet in full and conscious realization of its earthly existence, 
and from this high altitude in personal evolution, is to pass 
directly to still higher phases of development. 

Now by the analogy of what science discovers in Nature this concep- 
tion must be modified. All that science, apparently, can dis- 
cover or detect is the possibility of some germ of life contin- 
uing after the dissolution of the full-developed form here ; but 
this germ must pass historically through similar phases of evo- 
lution, on a di.fferent plane of matter elsewhere, which the earth- 
form of the life-germ experienced in its history on this planet. 
Arrhenius. perhaps unconsciously, affords us this hint when he 
says: "One important conclusion we may perhaps already an- 
ticipate is that all living beings of the Universe must be 
related to one another, and that when life begins on any body 
of the cosmos, it must commence with the lowest known forms 
to rise in slow evolution to more highly organized types." 
(Page 252). 

[364] 



APPENDICES 



If "life itself is eternal like matter and energy," as lie says, and if 
by my hypothesis thought too is a form of radiant energy ; and 
if by Arrhenius's theory life can be transmitted from one planet 
to another by light pressure; then why cannot we postulate that 
life-germs, imbued with thought — or consciousness-energy, left 
over from the expired physical body of a human being, may also 
be thus carried by light pressure through the ether to other 
worlds, there to evolve into a new form of biological and psychic 
development ? 



PROPOSITION XLV 

As the germ of this planetary life (an infinitesimal 
speck) is potentially deathless on this plane, and has 
descended in myriad forms of life directed by here- 
dity, environment and survival, may not also a germ 
of life, consisting of more sublimate, invisible and 
self-perpetuating substance, emanating from that 
group of cells which constitute the organic centres of 
thought and consciousness, become the logical residue 
of the life-energy of this plane, susceptible to contin- 
uity of existence on a plane where such substance may 
be capable of more complex and highly developed 
forms of expression? 



[365] 



Index 



Index 



Abercrombie Lascelles, 288 
Abrams, Dr. Albert, 194, 272 
"Age, Growth and Death," 

quoted, 96 
Aksakoff, Hon. Alex., quoted, 

232 
* 'Annals of Psychical Science," 

quoted, 267 
Ants, psychical faculty, 181 
Argumentation, futility of, 6 
Arrhenius, Prof., quoted, 143, 

318 
Athenaeum, quoted, 27 
"Atom, Universe and the," 69, 

70 

B 

Bastian, Professor, quoted, 95 

Bateson, Prof. William, quoted, 
122, 185, 186 

Beale, Dr., referred to, 91 

Becquerel, Prof. Jeaii, quoted, 
101 

"Belief in God and Immor- 
tality," 56 

Binet, Prof. Alfred, quoted, 38 

"Biotic" Energy, 137 

Blondlot, referred to, 267 

Bobbett, E. W., quoted, 267 

Bossuet, referred to, 47 

Brain and Thought, 23 

Brain Waves and Light Waves, 
273 

British Association for Advance- 
ment of Science, 96 

Buchner, Dr. Ludwig, 26 



"Cadentists," 17 
Cagliostro, referred to, 83 
Calkins, Dr., referred to, 90 



"Cantilever Theory," 2>70 
Carel, Dr. Alexis, 38, 88, 89, 93. 

119, 232 
Carr, Dr., on nerve functiojii, 37- 
Carrington, Hereward, 112 
"Cell and Heredity," 38, S4 

191 
Cell Division and Immortaliff, 

53, 54 
Chamberlain, Prof., referred |% 

151 
Chance Argument, concerning, 1^ 
Clairvoyant experiences, ^0^ 11' 
Coleridge, quoted, 19 
Colloids, function of, 197 
"Conceptions of ImmortAli|f,** 

65 ' ' 

Consciousness as a force, 1^9 
"Constitution of Matter/** g^ot^ 

ed, 190 
Copernicus, referred to, 149 
Crawford, Dr. W. J., quoted, ^,ttk' 
Crookes, Sir William, quoie^i V^ 

133, 154, 193, 198, 232, ^^ 
Curie, Mme., referred tq, 4^$|1 
Cuvier, i^eferred t,% Xbti 



Dalton's atomic theory, 7 
Darwin, referred to, 91, lfil| 
Darget, Commandant, refe|Tc;d |4fy 

129 ff. 
Dastre, Professor, quoted, 179 
Davy, Sir Humphrey, quoted, 135 
"Death, Causes and Phenome- 
na," quoted, 118 
De Vries, Prof., referred to, 91i 
Driesch, Prof., referred to, 9Q 
Duncan's "New Knowledge," 

quoted, 139, 289 
Dwight, Dr., quoted, 26 
"Dynamis," function of, 162 



I 3,69 ] 



INDEX 



E 

"Electrical Experimenter," re- 
ferred to, 273 
Electrical Nature of Matter, li 
"Electron" defined, 294 
"Electron, The," by Millikan, 

223 
"Electron Theory of Thought," 

275 
Elliot, Prof. Hugh, quoted, 98, 

105 
Emanation "X," referred to, 297 
Erwin, Prof. Marion, quoted, 09 
"Eternity and Energy," 162 
"Eternity," by Haeckel, quoted, 

163 
••Eternity of Psychom," 162 
"Evolution of Forces," quoted, 

153 
"Evolution of Matter," quoted, 

153, 305 
"Evolution of Religious 
. Thought," quoted, 78 



H 

Haeckel, Ernst, 6, 12, 16, 23, 
35, 49, 52, 91, 95, 126, 132, 
141, 162, 165, 180, 184, 137, 
201, 277 

Harvey. Dr. William, referred 
to, 151 

Hawthorne ' s " Scarlet Letter, ' ' 
quoted, 212 

Hemans, Mrs., quoted, 324 

"Heredity," quoted, 95 

Hering, Professor, quoted, 49 

Hertig, Professor, referred to, 91 

Higher Criticism, 57 

Hirschel, Sir John, referred to, 
21 

Hodgson, Prof., referred to, 234 



Identity of Spirit, 223 
Imagination, fundamental, 2 
"India to Mars, From," 231 
Ingersoll Foundation Lecture, 3d 



'Field, Cyrus, referred to, 155 
Fiske, Prof. J., quoted, 100 
Flammarion, referred to, 91 
Flfichsig, referred to, 181, 287 
Flournoy, Prof., referred to, 231 
"Force and Matter." quoted, 26 
Porel, Prof. A., quoted, 181 
Foster, Dr., referred to, 91 
Fraunhofer, referred to, 7 
Fr^zer's "Belief in Immor- 
tality," 82 
Freaks, mathematical, 19 
"i^rom India to Mars," quoted, 
231 

G 

Galileo, referred to, 149 
German School of Thought, 96 
Ghost, photograph of, 227 
Graham, Prof. Thomas, quotoJ, 

197 
Grasset, Prof. Joseph, quoted, 30 



James's Psychology, quoted, 10 
Jones, Prof. Harry C, quoted, 

14 
Journal of Experimental Medi- 
cine, quoted, 88 



Kelvin, Lord, referred to, 20, 46 
King, Irving, quoted on Truth, 5 
"Kingdom of Man," quoted, 190 
"Kubla Khan," referred to, 19 



Lang, Andrew, referred to, 3 IS 
Lankester, Prof. Ray, quoted, 95, 

190 
La Place, referred to, 7 
Larkin, Dr. Lucien, quoted, 206, 

217 



[370] 



INDEX 



Le Bon, Gustave, 133, 153, 195, 

200, 207, 293, 305 
Le Conte, Professor, quoted, 78, 

120 
Leuba, Professor, quoted, 56 
"Life of the Universe, The," 143. 

318 
"Life, the Wonders of," quoted, 

188 
"Light " London, 233 
Literary Digest, The, 208 
Lodge, Lady referred to, 249 
Lodge, Sir Oliver, 200, 235, 237, 

241. 248, 305 
Lucretius, referred to, 20 



M 

Maeterlinck, Maurice, quoted, 233 
Man and Nature, 22 
Manchester Guardian, quoted, 

288 
Masefield, John, quoted, 70, 146 

326 
"Master and Man," quoted, 315 
"Matter and Energy," quoteil. 

41. 104 128, 205, 296 
Matter, electrical nature of, 14 
Maupas, biologist, quoted, 90, 

323 
Maxwell, Clerk, quoted, 153 
Memory, bond of. 283 
Millard, Bailey, quoted, 89 
Millikan. Robert Andrews, quot- 
ed, 223 
Mind, apart from matter, 1 
Minot, Dr. Charles S., referred 

to. 96 
"Modern Light on Immortality," 

17. 87, 175 
"Modern View of Matter," 305 
"Monism," 162 
"Monist," quoted, 20 
Moore, Dr. Benjamin, 1, 14, 17, 

142, 155, 184 
Myers, referred to, 234 



N 
"N" rays, referred to, 268 
Nature, how to be understood, 14 
Nebular hypothesis, 152 
Newbold, referred to, 234 
"New Conceptions of Diagnosis,'* 

194 
"New Knowledge," quoted, 139, 

289 
"Nitika," referred to, 315 



Organisms, living and dead, 120 
"Origin and Nature of Life, 1, 

17, 44, 96, 142, 156, 184, 197, 

209 
Ostwald, Professor Wilhelm, 3I>, 

42, 44, 135, 136, 208 



Paraselsus, referred to, 83 ' ' 
Parmelee, Prof. M., quoted, 76' ■♦-' 
"Permissive" argument of 

James, 11 
Phantoms of the living, 108 
Photo of ghost, 227 
Photography of thoughts, 32 
Physiological psychology, 26 . 
Physiology of human body, 203 
Piper, Mrs., medium, 231 • 
"Planetesimal Theory," 151 
Plato, quoted, 9 
Podmore, Frank, quoted. 107 
Poncaire, M. Lucien, 153 
Priestley, Dr., referred to, 150 
Protozoan, 55 

Psychic faculty of ants, 181 
"Psychic Phenomena Science ani 
Immortality," 29, 93, 103, 18«, 
199, 235, 283 
Psychological and bilogical prog- 
ress compared, 281 
"Psychom," eternity of, 162 
Ptolemaic astronomy, 149 



[371] 



INDEX 



R 

* 'Radio- Activity," nature of, 289 

"Ra4iolaria," 49 

Ramsay, Prof. William, 306 

•'Raymond, or Life and Death," 
240 ff. 

•'Reality of Psychic Phenome- 
na," ayo flf. 

••Republic" of Plato, quoted, 9 

Richardson, Sir Benjamin, quot- 
ed, 118 

"Riddles of the Sphinx," 80 

••Riddle of the Universe," 1«, 
141, 278 

Romanes, Professor George G., 
quoted, 20 

Itoyce, Professor, 64 

Roux, referred to, 91 

fitutherford, Professor, 193, 1^8 



Stevenson, R. L., quoted, 19 
Symington, Prof. J., quoted, 278 



Tennyson, quoted, 334 
Thomson, Arthur J., quoted, 17 
Thompson, Prof. D'Arcy, 96 
Thought and Brain, 23 
Thought photography, 32 
Titchener's Psychology, 10 
"Times," N. Y., quoted, 31, 88, 

225 
Tolstoi, quoted, 315 
Troland, Dr. Leonard, quoted, 

207 
"Truth Seeker," quoted, 105 
Truth, validity of, 8 
Tweedale, on spirit photo, 225 



♦•Scarlet Letter, The," quoted, 

S12 
Schiller. Professor, quoted, 80 
* 'Science Progress," quoted, 105 
^*Scientifiquo du Spiritisme," 

quoted, 30 
Scienlific Physiology, 10 
Self -consciousness defined, 283 
Serviss, Professor, 45, 60 
Shakespeare, quoted, 22, 311, 313 
VSilent Voices," 311 
Smithsonian Annuals, 95, 102, 

134, 179, 182, 278 
Socrates, quoted, 9 
Soddy, Frederick, 41, 113, 128, 

206, 294 
Spencer, referred to, 91, 186 
Spirit, identity of, 223 
Stahl, quoted, 151 



"Universe and The," «uotQ«l^ 

69, fp. 
"Universe, Life i»f Th«j,*f l^^Sl, 

318 



Verworn, Max, 91, 180 
Vitalism, 95 

W 
Weismann, referred to and quot- 
ed, 37, 51. 71, 91, 131, 137 " 
Whitman, Walt, quoted oa 

death, 316 
Wilson, Dr. Andrew, 202 ff 
Wilson, Prof. E. B., 38, 90, 93, 

187, 189, 190, 191, 199 
Wisner, referred to, 9 
"Wonders of Life," 188 



[372] 



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